This will come as no surprise to those who know me. I'm reading a Eugene Peterson book. This is the latest in his series on Practical Theology and is entitled, The Jesus Way. I'm only part way through, but already I'm having to think once again about this life God has called us to. Here are some passages I've underlined that are causing me to look again at "church."
"A Christian congregation, the church in your neighborhood, has always been the primary location for getting this way and truth and life of Jesus believed and embodied in the places and among the people with whom we most have to do day in and day out.
A Christian congregation is a company of praying men and women who gather, usually on Sundays, for worship, who then go into the world as salt and light...God means to do something with us, and he means to do it in community. We are in on what God is doing, and we are in on it together.
The great American innovation in congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise...If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them...this is the best and most effective way that has ever been devised for gathering large and prosperous congregations...There is only one thing wrong: this is not the way in which God brings us into conformity with the life of Jesus and sets us on the way of Jesus' salvation. This is not the way in which we become less and Jesus becomes more. This is not the way in which our sacrificed lives become available to others in justice and service.
Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life."
5 comments:
Ah, Saint Eugene! I've been groovin' on Ravi Zacharias lately. It may be my own myopia but it sure seems like God has raised up some wonderful leaders in these days.
We did a study of the Apostle John's writings one time, and as we followed some of his ideas in the scriptures, it became so glaringly obvious that our christianity is to be lived out in community, that you could almost prove your salvation by your involvement/commitment to other believers.
And it wasn't just John. The way Paul talked about the church, you get the feeling that it is an organism rather than an organization. Even to the point that if one part is missing or not functioning properly the whole thing gets sick. It's an amazing way to think about the Church. Keep that in mind and think about Gal.5:15 - If you bite and devour each other, be careful or you will be destroyed by each other. - ooo creepy.
Do you think that it's possible to have a healthy walk with only a few believers who get all their teaching through the radio and aren't really part of a larger congregation?
Nope
Let me elaborate further now that I have a minute. I'm convinced that we cannot truly be healthy in our walk with Christ unless we're connected with a local body. I know there might be exceptions (you're stranded on a desert isle or stuck in prision), but even then I don't think you can grow in some areas that you need to without the push and pull of other believers. We've taken a relationship with Christ that is meant to be very personal and made it very private which makes it something else altogether. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament shows us that we are better together. "Be all you can be" is best done in community.
I think the case can be made that if you have no desire to be with other believers you might not be one yourself. Jesus seemed to think our unity was pretty important. I think a lot of the time our attitude about church is backward, we go to get something when we should be going to give.
"Forsake not the assemblying of yourselves together" was not just recently erased from Scripture, or deemed "no longer relevant" by our Lord, who knew of the internet before the foundations of the world!
WhitemoonG
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