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Glossary

This list of words and terms will help you to understand some of the key concepts presented in the seminar and books.


Apostolic:
A way of life and leadership that aligns with that of the New Testament church. This is particularly demonstrated in the life and ministry of the apostle Paul, who served the church in such a way that it was released into its destiny in creation. Paul never sought to establish an institution; rather he laboured to create a people of God who could stand in life and accomplish all that God intended. This kind of apostolic leadership creates an apostolic people – who in turn can equip and release the next generation into the divine purpose. Apostolic can be used in relation to leadership, networks, people or church.

Constantinian Construct:
The integration of the early church into the Roman Empire, which was at the time ruled by the Emperor Constantine. This ‘marriage’ of church and the Empire caused the early church to take on a much stronger organizational form. After the break from Rome during the Reformation, the Protestant churches still operated as a functionary of their particular nation state. Over time different groups began to move away from State control and formed more independent denominations. These movements still, however, saw church in a similar way, emphasizing the rule of leaders and the centrality of the organizational dimension over (and often against) the life of individual Christians who are the church.

Construct:
An organizational structure that is held together by, or exists on the basis of, a doctrine or a ministry or, in the case of a business organization, a product or service. The church is not essentially an organization; it is a living body in Christ and a family in God. The form of church that draws the people of God into a structure that defines their relationship to the body of Christ by way of membership to that organization, and directs the greater part of their ministry from that place, can be termed ‘the church as construct’.

Hebraic Worldview:
The vision of the creation that was given by God to the Hebrew nation. The Hebrews were taught by God to see the throne of God as existing over the present earth; this was called the heaven of God, or the third heaven. The two other heavens were those of humanity (the first) and the angelic (the second). This is in contrast to the Platonic worldview that disconnected the heaven of God from the present creation and made it something we could only access or engage in the next life. The Hebraic worldview was holistic. It viewed men and women as God’s image-bearers, living out their vocation to fill all of creation with the glory of God. For the Hebrew, God’s creative order was to be enjoyed, not treated as something to be endured until death took them away from the earth.

New Creational Landscape:
The context in which the church should be operating. A Platonic (dualistic) view of the world tends to cause us to see the church as a separate mediating institution, located mostly in congregational settings. In contrast to this, and in line with a Hebraic worldview, the church is the people of God standing in creation under its head, Jesus Christ.  Here the context for the church becomes the entire creation – marriage, family, community and all of the spheres of working life, as it embraces and collaborates with God’s kingdom purpose.  The church in this landscape gathers together in fellowships of grace and provision as a pillar and support for the people of God, standing in creation. The New Creational Landscape is a term that describes this Hebraic creation context in which the church is to be positioned.

Pilgrim Church:
To the Hebrew, life was about a pilgrimage. Their religion was a way of life that, in the early period of their history, was not just about tradition, ceremonialism or ritual - it was about a relationship with God. Throughout the history of Christianity, the pilgrim church has been made up of people who, as Jesus said: hear the wind of the Spirit of God and follow His voice, no matter what the cost.

Platonic Thinking:
Plato was a fifth century BC philosopher and aristocrat from Athens. His clan was overtaken by the democrats and became disenfranchised. Plato developed a system of thinking about life that divided the spiritual realm from the natural realm, the heaven from the earth, the finite from the infinite, the corrupt from the perfect and so on. This dividing of life into ‘opposites’ is called dualism. 
Plato divided our world in this way so that people would feel they were in the wrong place and would thus want to get to the right place. To get from this corrupt world to the eternal ream Plato said that a person would have to submit to the State, a ruling entity that was constituted by laws that were aligned with his version of heaven. Athens did not take his advice, but the early church increasingly adopted and adapted his thinking and made it the main worldview of the church from around the fifth century onwards. 

Spheres of Authority and Influence: 
These five spheres of creational authority and influence are best understood as a series of authoritative relationships that connect us to God, to each other and to all of the created order. These spheres are as follows: marriage, family, work, tribe (gathering) and nation – the body of Christ in the world, a holy nation among the nations. The reason I use the words ‘tribe’ for gathering and ‘nation’ for the body of Christ in the world, is to equate them with our understanding of the people of Israel.

The Empire Spirit:
This term is drawn from the early church’s alliance with the Roman Empire, following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in AD 312.  Soon after his conversion, Christianity became the State religion of Rome and its domains. From that time on, until the Reformation, the church either acted as a component of the Empire, or, when it had the opportunity, it acted as if it were the Empire, having power over people, law and life. This tendency for the organized church to take power over the lives of people, or to draw to itself the rights to manage or own the kingdom process, is akin to the ‘spirit’ of that move which took place in early church history.

Trinitarian:
God in Scriptures is both one and three - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As the hymn says: ‘God in three persons; blessed Trinity’. To approach something from a Trinitarian perspective is to look at it or consider it from the different but related standpoint of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A good example of this is found in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, where we read that ‘there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord (Jesus Christ). And there are varieties of effects, but the same God (the Father) who works all things in all persons’.

Vocational Grace Motivations:
Drawn from Ephesians 4:7–11 and Acts 6, these six grace motivations represent the different ministry graces given by Christ to Christians to help them fulfil their calling or vocation in the creation. These graces motivate, direct and enable the individual to locate the work that is most suitable to their calling and to succeed in that work with the gifts, skills and abilities given to them by God. These grace motivations are apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, and practical leader.