timbrellstar

While reading a church website this morning about how they planted a new church community I read the following wonderful words:

The rush for this adventurous community was in getting to be the Church – not just attend it. It was clear church was experienced best when we were in living it, not simply watching it happen. ROCKHARBOR had been marked by a heart of passionate involvement.

If you’re watching something happen, then you’re not really part of it. You’re not engaged in it, it’s not costing you anything.

I read something else yesterday about the 80/20 rule, which is about 80% of the work in a church being done by 20% of the people, or members. It’s a common problem. The article was saying that in many ways the way we structure church, the way we set it up actually results in this 80/20 situation. When the focal point of church is a Sunday meeting(s) where a smaller group of people are creating a time of ministry/worship/teaching, then it stands to reason that the rest of the people gathered are spectators to some degree.

I’m not sure how valid that is in every context. There are people in church who are there because they’re seeking, people who need healing and rest and teaching, but then there are a lot of Christians sitting in church each Sunday who come and go, and don’t actually take part in what church is about at all.

I think there’s room to think about how we are best to function as a church.  What is important is truth, and I’ll come back to that in a future post. Community is important.  Contextualising Gospel truth into the culture(s) we live in is important. Doing everything we do for King Jesus and His Glory is of uppermost importance.

I certainly want to be part of a local church where we can say ‘ The rush for this adventurous community was in getting to be the Church!‘.

In response to Dave’s question relating to my previous post; Does the Christian faith need “repainting”?

Well, I don’t know. Obviously the original masterpiece is painted in scripture isn’t it?

I think Rob Bell is saying that in every generation through the ages and continuing on, we can ask ourselves how what we read in scripture ‘looks like’ for us today.

I think you have to be careful because obviously truth is truth, and what is essential and unchangeable doesn’t alter with time, culture or anything else.

However taking worship as an example, at the core of it, worship of God is what goes on between us and our Father but the expression of that worship has been demonstrated differently throughout the ages. Actually, probably history repeats itself, and therefore, our expressions of worship might too, but that’s not the point.

So I suppose how we ‘do church’, including worship and everything else is up for question.

I know Rob Bell doesn’t like labels, and he wouldn’t necessarily call Mars Hill an emerging church, but whatever, they are asking the same questions ‘How do we do church?’, ‘what is church for us going to look like?’. They are going back to the scriptures and working out church from the ground up, relating it to their culture.

Thinking about it, isn’t that similar to how the bible, Christianity, God, the Church would need to be translated within a missionary context? Not taking how we do church and Christianity and bending a culture to do church and Christianity the same way, but helping them to work out (or letting them work out) how they are going to be Christians within the context of their culture?

I don’t have a problem with any of that as long as we don’t compromise on what is unchangeable, and what matters most.

For me the most important idea is getting back to what we see in Acts 4, where all the believers were together and with one mind, and no one was lacking because where someone was without, other Christians gave what they had. They were a loving supportive, sacrificial community full of the love of God, working out Grace in each other. A living letter to the world, demonstrating the love of God.

That’s the kind of church I want to belong to, and that’s what I find most exciting about it all.

It’s great to ask questions and to be relevant, whatever. I feel like there’s a point we need to stop asking how we ‘do’ church, and just ‘be the church’, which is very messy, but very ‘real’.