November Webinar Q&A

Our November webinar was filled with thoughtful questions from our attendees. Here is a question that did not get addressed, with a reply from our panelist Dr. Richard Harvey.

Question: What are some first steps in communicating with Christian leaders about the importance of Jewish believers developing/retaining our Jewish identity as essential to the Body of Messiah?

Richard Harvey:

A great question. As Yachad BeYeshua, we are trying to do this on several levels - academic, denominational, and personal interactions. Academically, many of us are involved with the Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology.

At the personal level, we share our personal journeys with Christians in our fellowships and congregations. Church leaders may or may not be familiar with Jewish disciples of Yeshua, and many are interested in hearing our stories. Of course, this raises both practical and theological questions. Should Christians accept us as Jewish disciples of Jesus when this is a problem for the Jewish community and Jewish-Christian relations? How does the Jewish background of scripture, the Jewishness of Jesus, and the early church relate to the worldwide, multi-ethnic church today? What about the place of the people and land of Israel today? All these are challenging and sometimes controversial issues, as they were in the early days of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance and remain so today. The IHCA consulted with denominational leaders (all Protestant at the time) and had good feedback and encouragement from them. The IHCA was frequently acknowledged by church leaders to have an important role in providing care and support for Jewish disciples of Yeshua, and to have an important contribution to scholarship and theology on Jewish-Christian issues. For more details see here.

Our experience is that many Christian leaders are keen to learn and have a great interest in these topics. That is why Yachad BeYeshua aims, amongst other things, to put these questions on the agenda and address them through personal contacts, organisational interaction, books and publications, etc.