Church

This is a quote from the book 'Radical' that I posted on about a week ago.  It's about what church is.

“ Children and the elderly, students and workers, men and women all joined together in a body that is united with other followers of Christ around the world in a practical strategy to make disciples and impact nations for the glory of Christ. A community of Christians each multiplying the gospel by going, baptizing, and teaching in the contexts where we live every day. Is anything else, according to the Bible, even considered a church?”

I'm a bit disillusioned with the way we do church at the moment.  It all seems pretty inadequate.  I don't mean that my own church is particularly terrible, I think that most churches aren't getting it right.  It seems to me that church is mostly a case of Christians getting together on a Sunday to meet, read the Bible, pray, hear the Word explained and sing a few songs.  At my church at the moment we have a goal to get all members into a small group where people meet together regularly to pray and wrestle with the Word.  This is all great stuff, but it's only a really small part of what church should be.  What's happened to churches that we have to have as a goal that Christians will meet together to encourage and build one another up?  If we can't find time to meet with our brothers and sisters outside of an hour on Sundays then we're too busy with other things and need to reconsider our priorities in this world.

I think that a local church aiming for these things (attendance at church and attendance at a small group) is aiming low.  Really, really low.   The church is a community.  More than that, the church is a family. We're a family that should be doing everything we can to grow and to bring others from outside, in the cold, inside into the warm.


But that's not how we behave.  We bicker and fight with one another.  We show that we don't want just anyone to join our community, we only want a select few who we deem worthy.  We rarely, if ever, tell people about Jesus.  There are individuals who care for and take part in the community around them, but collectively, as a church, we're devoid of participation in our communities.


I think that our churches should be, as David Platt puts it, 'A community of Christians each multiplying the gospel by going, baptising and teaching, in the contexts where we live every day.'  But they're not.  We're too institution focused.  I hear people asking questions like 'how can you serve your local church?'  This seems like a good question, but it's not.  Much more appropriate questions are 'how can you serve Jesus?' and 'how can you serve your brothers and sisters?' and 'how can you serve the unbelievers in your community?'  The local church is an institution and we don't serve institutions, we serve our God and each other.  If we insist on asking this question we should ask 'how are you serving in your local church?'


So I want to propose some things that I'll expand on in later posts.


1. Leaders are to blame and they're the ones who have to turn things around.
2. Churches should have less paid staff.
3. Evangelism is everybody's responsibility.
4. Christian involvement in the community is paramount.
5. Evangelism is not more important than active concern for the poor and provision of material and earthly needs.
6. Concern for the poor is not more important than evangelism.
7. Holiness matters.
8. All Christians should administer the sacraments.
9. Christians should work with Christians from other churches.
10. Church leaders should be less afraid of their parishioners working with Christians from outside their church.
11. Churches whose meetings are all about property and money are worldly and not nearly as concerned with the things of the kingdom as they should be.  They will most likely be ministry ineffective.