I’m starting to read Adventures of a Computational Explorer by Stephen Wolfram, architect of Mathematica, robust software for mathematicians. This sentence in the Preface caught my eye:

But what I’ve come to realize–particularly having embraced the computational paradigm–is that the same intellectual thought processes can be applied not just to what one thinks of as science, but to pretty much anything.

It reminded me of something Dr. Terry Perciante, a chaos theory expert at Wheaton College shared a number of years ago. Terry showed us this figure, which I found out later is known as the Sierpinski Triangle:

It’s an infinitely continuing figure in which every blue triangle of any size has a hole in its center. What is interesting about this is that the figure is not produced by carefully drawing all the little triangles. It is produced by a very simple random process. God is at work behind the scenes bringing order out of chaos. Terry says that God’s sovereignty is cast against a background of turbulence.

I thought of the early church, described succinctly as:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people…And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.(Acts 2.42, 46, 47, ESV)

God added to their number! God is building the church:

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19 – 22, NKJV)

And the church looks like He wants it to look! The Sierpinski Triangle is composed of thousands of randomly distributed points. We never know where the next point is going to go and which point will be “next” to it later on in the process.

My point (no pun intended!) is that the triangle is not produced by copying a particular structure but by setting in motion a process. Jesus chose 12, invested in them for a few years and left. The Apostle Paul did the same.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)

And Paul reminded church leaders that their job is to do the same: equip the people to do the work:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, NIV)