Features
Rabbenu and Messianic Judaism
From Fringe, To Focus, To Future
April 20, 2007
Rabbenu is a meeting place for people who recognize that changing times bring new responsibilities.
Anyone who has been among Jewish believers in Yeshua for forty years or more, as I have, has lived amidst a whirlwind of change. When I came to believe in Yeshua, there were effectively no Messianic Congregations, although some isolated experiments, more along the lines of Hebrew Christian churches, had been attempted here and there. The idea of Messianic Congregations simply did not enter our minds. Until the 1970’s, Jews who believed in Jesus went to churches as a matter of routine and nurtured or maintained their Jewish identity, if at all, as a side issue, all the while being careful to balance that pursuit with the “higher purpose” of “preserving the unity of the Body of Christ.” While some sought to maintain their Jewish identities, almost no one ever asked themselves, “How have I grown as a Jew lately?”
Back then, most of us called ourselves Hebrew Christians. Despite the noble efforts of groups like the Hebrew Christian Alliance, we had very little communal cohesion. Rather, we were assimilated into church groups. As individual Jews honoring Yeshua in church contexts, we were peripheral people, and, considered collectively, a fringe group.
But, as Bob Dylan reminds us, “The times they are a-changing.” Today there are hundreds of Messianic Congregations, and, in the words of an old Jews for Jesus song, “eyes can finally see that Jewishness and Christ go hand in hand.” Today, thousands of Messianic Jews are eating kosher, keeping shabbat, debating halakha, and seeking to grow as Jews, phenomena both inconceivable and stigmatized just four decades past.
To understand these changes as being simply a matter of greater numbers, institutional growth, style, or organizational skill would be to misconstrue both the changes and the Change Agent. Clergy and laity, Jews and Gentiles, Church people and doctrinaire Messianic Jews widely agree that God seems to be up to something among Jews who believe in Yeshua. Not only are the numbers of Messianic Jews growing, Messianic Judaism is maturing, and becoming de-marginalized. Responsible leaders in both the Jewish and Christian communities are detecting a gravitational force moving Messianic Jews and Messianic Judaism from the periphery to the center, from the fringe to being in focus.
Messianic Jews are coming into focus partly because we are growing in self-awareness. It is as if we are waking from a deep sleep. Gradually we are awakening to our deep connection not only to the Jewish past, but also to the Jewish present and future. We are beginning to see ourselves as we truly are, part of the Jewish people, the community of Jacob. Increasingly, we are recognizing how that citizenship obliges us to honor the covenants God made with our ancestors, both now and into the future. We are not simply Jews who are for Jesus: we are Messianic Jews for Jewish life, sensitive to our identity as part of the community of the covenant. Finally, we are awakening to our collective destiny spoken of by the prophets, to live in obedience to Torah, renewed in the Ruach HaKodesh (the Divine Spirit), gathered around Messiah. We are awakening to what it means to be a community foreshadowing the Age to Come.
Rabbenu exists to serve this growing movement for Yeshua within the covenant community of Jacob, assisting both our leaders and our constituents in serving a destiny drawing nearer day by day. We want to be fully awake to what kind of movement we must be, and what kind of leaders we must have if we would maintain and hasten our transition from fringe to focus to future, serving the purposes of God.
Many Christians, alert to the identity of the Jewish people as a people of destiny, are coming alongside us as well, seeking to understand and respond to the impact of changing times upon their own identity and calling. We welcome their assistance, and hope we can serve them by answering their questions and addressing their concerns.
“The times they are a-changing.” At Rabbenu, we want to assist Messianic Jews who are not only changing with the times, but also eager to cooperate in making change happen.
Come join with us as we learn what it is to be both changed and change agents, sensitive to these prophetic times and to God’s transforming Presence in the midst.
Let's walk together, talk together, and learn together.
And may the favor of the Lord rest upon us.
"My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. . . . My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Ezekiel 37:24, 27).
