What is the Church?
Well, there have not been any posts in a while and I have this nagging question (thanks to this video I am working on) that I would love some responses: "What is the Church?"
Can any of you (all of you) give me your one to two sentence answer to this? Feel free to answer using a biblical reference, quote, puppetry, and of course original thought. I'll be eagerly waiting...
Can any of you (all of you) give me your one to two sentence answer to this? Feel free to answer using a biblical reference, quote, puppetry, and of course original thought. I'll be eagerly waiting...
posted by justin at 10:29 AM
3 Comments:
The church...I find myself wondering about the church a lot. Its my nature, to question things. My old roommate Jeff, who is an emergent pastor in Boulder, was the first to challenge me on this. We were sitting at the Sink (thats for all you Boulderites) talking about how often times there is a gap between Christian culture and Biblical concepts. He referenced the modern church and asked me if I thought it was Biblical.
As time went on I found myself saying, "yes and no." Elements like confession, corporate worship, teaching, prayer, are straight from the Bible, even worship order. (see 1 Corinthians 14) Jeff and I found ourselves in agreement that the church follows the model of orderly worship, but we also wondered how often we make it "controlled worship." We joked that if even the most respected member of the congregation stood up in the middle of the service and said he had "a prayer from the Lord to share" we could see the head pastor calling him on monday and saying, "hey ____, thanks for sharing your Spirit led prayer, in the future could you let us know in advance so we can put it in the bulletin." So we were just thinking, does the modern church struggle to enlist the congregation in their spiritual gifts?
"What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God." -1 Corinthians 14:26-28
Other scriptures I find myself checking out on this topic are 1 Corinthians 12 and Acts 2:42-47.
This is one of the passages Austin referenced and what I think of when I think of church:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." Acts 2:42-47
This (and a few other passages of scripture) is really all I can say I know about what the church is. Obviously church looks different in different places (countries, regions, denominations, etc.) But I feel like this description of what was going on in the early church is what should describe what is going on in church today. How that looks? I don't know. The more I think about this stuff the more I realize that I don't know that much, but the bible lays a good groundwork for what it means for believers to come together. I guess we take it from there, with Christ as our model and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, hoping that what we do at church is pleasing to our Father.
Off of what Mel said, I was thinking about the differences in churches, as she pointed across cultures, countries, ages, races, etc. Its ironic the way people make arguments for or against things like the ritual of Catholic church or the liberality of the emergent church, but I like what Mel said about the "groundwork." It seems the Holy Spirit and the Bible lay a groundwork for us as believers to come together and save people, praise God, and submit to one another in Love. There's such an irony in opinions because even those who criticize restrictions are restricting by disallowing ritual or order to worship.
I found myself finishing Melanie's blog with a freedom, a sense that tonight, no matter what happens at Emmaus, God has laid a foundation of Him and I get to commune with Him and his people. Its seens Gods emphasis on "church" was a principle, not a formula. While I criticize the modern church for its formulaic approach, it seems I am being equally constricting by trying to "adjust" to formula to exactly follow Acts 2.
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