What is the church to be?

For regular blog readers, I feel like I almost should be apologetic with the stuck themes here. It's just something that is stuck like a bad song in my mind.

It's hard to argue with what people say the church should be, but I do anyway. It is amazing how little is said in scripture about the purpose of the church, but so many do impose a belief on it. Some common ones:

A vehicle for spreading the gospel. Absolutely no scriptural basis for this. The early church commonly hid its gatherings, and carefully screened those who came before they came, due to the persecution common the first few centuries of the existence of the movement of Christ. The whole "seeker friendly" modern concepts would be foreign to the first century Christian. One did not bring them to church to convert them; one introduced the new disciple to the church.

When Paul and Barnabas were sent by the Antioch church - they weren't funded by them, the church in Antioch did not set up the tour, etc. They laid hands and sent them out. They had before hand perhaps did some training, then just sent them. No program, no infrastructure. They equipped them, encouraged them, and sent them on their way. Paul wrote of accepting no money - he was a tentmaker where he went.

The result of such thought makes Amway representatives. Not well rounded disciples. Such an approach results in a church which is considered a failure if it is not growing numerically, or seeing numeric growth in some way if the focus is in making "disciples" over there, where ever over there is.

The church is a place of healing - a hospital for sinners. Very common thought. Also no basis in scripture. It is another case of how examples or commands in scripture to disciples get cast off to the "church", which then makes a "program" to handle the issue/concern/command.

The result of such thought makes a place that doesn't expect or at least not welcome the "healthy". If healing happens, suddenly there is no point for a person to be there. It is as if we do not expect healing to occur if this is how we define church.

The church is a place of worship. Scripture never mentions that the church ever gathered for worship. I'm not counting those "headers" injected into most translations around I Corinthians 14. No, the church is said to have gathered for "encouraging and exhorting one another" or "to spur one another on to love and good deeds". Worship produces Jesus admirers, not Jesus disciples.

The church is a gathering for us to learn about God.
A variation on the church as an evangelical tool. Interesting history on this one - it is a perception of the church that emerged about the time the Bible became readily available for the masses due to the printing press. Knowledge replaced discipleship. Knowing replaced doing.


The church is a humanitarian organization. (or a place to impact the world, or that sort of thing). Closer I think, but still not too well grounded in scripture. The result is a place of goody-goody people at best. A reaction in the wrong direction from the knowledge emphasis crowd so dominate in Christian society.

What is it that the church should be, then? Scripturally, we see the church gathering as a community, not a sit down and shut up and follow the clergy. We see Paul instructing on the gatherings being centered on being a community and equipping one another. It's not about a vision for the church - the church had its vision and lost it. It's vision is to be a community of believers seeking to be Christs - the original meaning of "Christian" was "little Christ". Christ listened to the Father for his mission, not a pastor, not a church board. The early church, from what we could tell, commissioned the called to the work they were called to, not recruited its members to those programs the leaders were called to "lead". The leaders were servants, they were ones called to equip.

A church following its commission is one that equips its members for what they are called to. Not letting a clergy class define what the church is called to and recruiting to those programs.

Dadgummit

The first weekend of October, I'm serving on the work crew for a Wild At Heart Boot Camp. A prep assignment was to become familiar with one the resources Ransomed Heart offers because part of the duty of the work crew is working the resource tables. I've got most (I don't have Raising Girls -- I have one child, a son, so I didn't think it necessary to have Raising Girls). I'm behind in listening though, as I don't commute to work anymore and find that a good time to listen for me.

So I was listening to a recording called Unveiling Your Purpose. Wonderful recording, most I had heard though at a Calling Intensive I went to. There was one statement though that I didn't like, though I know it likely true. The speaker spoke of desires, and how there is much good to do, and much that may catch our attention for a day and make us think we must do something, but what we need to pay attention to is what do we keep coming back to, what lingers with us.

Dadgummit.

That makes me face a hard one. For years a recurring theme has been church reformation. I was always attracted to the latest trends for awhile, though I realize most of those now was the "church growth" garbage -- which is so much about the ABCs -- attendance, building, and cash flow. I thought about a career switch to church planting at one point. But it has become refined, realizing that a driving force has been wanting to see people come fully alive. The last few years, a focus has been in development -- developing the heart, learning how people discover what makes them come alive, etc.

I thought this was all headed toward living my calling in an arena similar to a life coach. And being this is a kind of first cut of "history", maybe it still is. For my readers, I provide this kind of honesty in my journey so those looking back on the end story don't see it as "so simple" and wondering why it can't be so simple for them. It's not simple.

So, where is it heading? I don't know, but this recurring theme suggests something with church reformation to me. And that leads to the 'dadgummit'. Sure I'd like to see churches focusing on what I think they should be doing, which is encouraging and equipping the saints. Church has become too much about show, about numbers, about being a club, just about everything but body that helps people become fully what God intended them to be. That latter point is what I think the intended outcome of encouraging and equipping was supposed to be.

What would be nice would be that the whole "church" thing was about equipping me to help people hurt by church. That's simpler than church reformation. I can visualize how that would work. But visualizing church reformation ... how would that occur?

Maybe I'm wrong in interpreting the past -- that would be nice. And I'll be talking to others, of course. Maybe they can help me see another view on it. Or maybe that speaker is just wrong. (I hope he doesn't rid this blog ...)

Definitely, this will be continued.