perhaps more effective than most
Ran across an article that found me contemplating similar questions I had once spent months toiling over in Scotland as we helped launch a church in Edinburgh, Scotland:
What is the Church supposed to look like? What aspects of the typical sunday service is scriptural and what has evolved and manifested itself through various cultural influences? Are there ways of doing church that we haven't even thought of yet? Have we become too institutionalized?
There is a church in Washington DC that has little more than 70 in attendance, yet many would regard it as the most effective and missional church in the US. This is in part why:
"Since the late 1940s, Cosby (90 years old and founder of Church of the Savior here in DC has preached every Sunday morning at what members call "2025." The gathering has taken on a special significance as Cosby has pressed for the church to break into small faith "communities" with their own social justice goals and worship services, an unorthodox structure the church believes leads to more creativity, intimacy and accountability." Read THE ARTICLE and have your opinion. (a possible counter-argument would be the proclivity to a social gospel approach)
Today's church (including 'emerging church,' 'liquid church,' 'fresh expressions of church,' 'mission-shaped church,' and many others) is grappling with the question of what its mission and life might look like in the days to come, particularly with the pace of social/political/ecological changes where policies in China can now directly effect me (welcome to the global village). But the present mood of frustration with existing patterns of church life melded with postmodern free-for-all experimentation, on the one hand, and residual (mainly protestant) fears about institutional order, on the other, have conspired together to produce cheerful and not-so-cheerful chaos.
Let it be said, I live and breath the local church. As the largest organization in the world, there is little doubt in my mind when Bill Hybels said the local church is the hope of the world. Its institutional capacity is essential, make no mistake. It's biblical. Jesus makes continual reference in the Gospels to Isaiah where it speaks of delighting in the house of God. He didn't come to do away with the Temple or various forms of religious organizational patterns, but to challenge what it had become.
But stories like these always make one want to continually revisit and reimagine they way we organize and celebrate together in the house of God in todays world.
Read the article.
What is the Church supposed to look like? What aspects of the typical sunday service is scriptural and what has evolved and manifested itself through various cultural influences? Are there ways of doing church that we haven't even thought of yet? Have we become too institutionalized?
There is a church in Washington DC that has little more than 70 in attendance, yet many would regard it as the most effective and missional church in the US. This is in part why:
"Since the late 1940s, Cosby (90 years old and founder of Church of the Savior here in DC has preached every Sunday morning at what members call "2025." The gathering has taken on a special significance as Cosby has pressed for the church to break into small faith "communities" with their own social justice goals and worship services, an unorthodox structure the church believes leads to more creativity, intimacy and accountability." Read THE ARTICLE and have your opinion. (a possible counter-argument would be the proclivity to a social gospel approach)
Today's church (including 'emerging church,' 'liquid church,' 'fresh expressions of church,' 'mission-shaped church,' and many others) is grappling with the question of what its mission and life might look like in the days to come, particularly with the pace of social/political/ecological changes where policies in China can now directly effect me (welcome to the global village). But the present mood of frustration with existing patterns of church life melded with postmodern free-for-all experimentation, on the one hand, and residual (mainly protestant) fears about institutional order, on the other, have conspired together to produce cheerful and not-so-cheerful chaos.
Let it be said, I live and breath the local church. As the largest organization in the world, there is little doubt in my mind when Bill Hybels said the local church is the hope of the world. Its institutional capacity is essential, make no mistake. It's biblical. Jesus makes continual reference in the Gospels to Isaiah where it speaks of delighting in the house of God. He didn't come to do away with the Temple or various forms of religious organizational patterns, but to challenge what it had become.
But stories like these always make one want to continually revisit and reimagine they way we organize and celebrate together in the house of God in todays world.
Read the article.
posted by dcschmiddy at 9:33 PM
2 Comments:
"Jesus makes continual reference in the Gospels to Isaiah where it speaks of delighting in the house of God. He didn't come to do away with the Temple or various forms of religious organizational patterns, but to challenge what it had become."
Interesting viewpoint on this. I would agree that Jesus didn't come to do away with the Temple per se, but as Christians WE are the Temple. It's not about a building or a specific location or any of that, IMHO.
That's great Rhea, we are on even keel with that (John 2:19). There is no question that Christ's actions were an ultimate result in His indwelling within each of us and that the Church throughout Acts and the Letters was the people, not defined by a specific locality.
There still remains a sociological need for the institutional church and as I shared, Christ was not eluding to the destruction of that, nor was the early church, but the transformation of space as priority and ultimately the setting in motion God's plan to redeem the world and set it to rights. We are the church, no question, but are organized and mobilized through a particular structure and celebrate Christ through a specific liturgy and location which does and will continue to evolve and remains diverse. What this church in DC suggests and is perhaps correct in saying that the tendency is to remain more loyal to the church as a denomination or organization than the mission of the church. Those, at times are mutually exclusive.
I do love this article because this church has a genuine sense of mission. It's very easy, I'm sure you've witnessed, to focus more on service order and maintaining a loyalty to an institution and miss the entire point of the Gospel and mission.
thanks for the response.
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