by Frank Viola

My friends Andrew Jones and Brian McLaren have written about something they call “deep ecclesiology.” This phrase appears to be derived from Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of “deep semantics.” Chomsky said that underlying the “surface structures” of the statements we make there lies a deeper and simpler structure that is ingrained in the human capacity for language.

Andrew and Brian have said that in a similar way there lies underneath our varying models of church a basic underlying reality that is manifested in our historical and social settings. This notion has been coined “deep ecclesiology.”

I resonate wholeheartedly with the concept that there is a reality of the church that is higher and deeper than what typically occurs in many modern church structures. To wit, a “deeper” ecclesiology.

by George H. Warnock

 
Jesus comes on the scene, and immediately we are made to realize that here is One that is Great because of His humility. Here is One who can take note of the things that are meaningless to others; for He (like the hyssop) was but a “Root of a dry ground.” Here was One who “had no form nor comeliness”… One who could not get enthralled about the mighty and the noble; or share the enthusiasm of the disciples about the splendour of the Temple; but who saw beauty in the “lily of the field”… One who would not break the “bruised reed,” or quench the “smoking flax.”

True greatness does not stand apart, above and beyond the ordinary. 

-The Pervasive Power of God’s Kingdom

by Brett Jacobsen

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." (Matt 13:33)

It may seem to some a little odd that Jesus used leaven to describe His Kingdom, as leaven usually speaks of corruption: “Being bred of corruption and spreading through the mass of that in which it is mixed, and therefore symbolising the pervasive character of evil…” [1]. It most often speaks of one of two aspects of corruption: