The Missio Dei: Corporate Display by Frank Viola

The church is called to gather together regularly to display God’s life through the ministry of every believer. How? Not by religious services where a few people perform before a passive audience. But in open-participatory meetings where every member of the believing priesthood functions, ministers, and expresses the living God in an open-participatory atmosphere (1 Cor. 14:26; 1 Peter 2:5; Heb. 10:24–25; etc.).

God dwells in every Christian and can inspire any of us to share something that comes from Him with the church. In the first century, every Christian had both the right and the privilege of speaking to the community. This is the practical expression of the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.

The open-participatory church meeting was the common gathering of the early church. Its purpose? To edify the entire church and to display, express, and reveal the Lord through the members of the body to principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3:8–11).

Today, many churches are stuck with only one kind of church service where a few people minister to a largely passive audience.

But such services do not display Christ through the every-member functioning of His body.

Equally so, they don’t display the Headship of Christ, because He is not leading the meeting by His Spirit. Instead, human headship directs what happens, who participates, and when.

I’ve written on this extensively in my book Reimagining Church. Suffice it to say that every church should have a venue for the free-yet orderly functioning of every member of the house of God whereby each Christian offers spiritual sacrifices to God and ministers to the body.

Through such meetings, God in Christ is made visible and the whole church is built up.

This dimension of the church is not peripheral. It’s central to the church’s life and mission.