Church is not a thing, it’s a being. You don't "go to church" once a week. You ARE the church 24-7. There are a lot of places you could go with this but I'm going to focus on one aspect of being the church. Being the church is a way-of-life that, when you take away all education and preconceived ideas, should come naturally to a Christian walking in the Spirit. To put it simply, being the church is really just being in relationships. That is the heart of it. It’s not about singing great songs. It’s not about hearing a great message. It’s not about having great ministries, buildings, attendance, etc... It’s all about the relationships. There are three relationships involved; the one between you and God, the one between you and your fellow believers, and the one between you and non-believers. If you look throughout the New Testament, most everything Paul tells the church to do is relational.(Here's a few examples: Col 3:12,13; Rom 15:14; Jas 5:16; Eph 5:19-21; I Thes 5:11; Heb 3:13) There is nothing institutional about church.
I keep hearing the question, so what does an organic meeting of the church look like? Honestly, I don't know. We are supposed to meet(Heb 10:24,25). But really, does it have to look like anything? Hebrews says we're supposed to exhort one another, but I don't think we have to make the church look like anything. Why do we try to make it into something anyway? Its like we’re trying to control it. Are we afraid of something? I don’t know. But, whenever we try to organize or run church, we automatically put our man-made boundaries, limitations and names on it. I think the only titles the Bible gives the church is "bride" and "body" of Christ. I don't see any reason to add our titles and definitions to that. I'm against giving any type of church gathering a title or name because of the implications that will come with it. And also, when you name something, you automatically divide it from others of its kind. So, when I go to meetings on Thursday nights and Sunday nights, I will say I'm going to hang out with some of my Christian friends. I don’t want any “name boundaries” between me and any of my friends who don’t fellowship with us on those nights. On Thursday and Sunday, we're just friends who have God in common and want to get together weekly to celebrate it and practice being an encouragement to each other. That brings me to what we do in our meetings...
Do we have an agenda? To a certain extent, yes. But it’s never in stone and we're always open to whatever. No, we don't have to sing songs every time. No, we don't have to have one person prepare a word every time. There is freedom to do what the Lord puts on our hearts to do. One night at Guy Ben's we didn't even leave the dinner table. One topic of conversation led to another and we just lets things flow naturally. The Lord had laid on Guy Ben's heart to talk about the church and so we did. We chatted about other things too, prayer together, and watched a movie. In essence, we hung out. Nothing artificial, controlled, or scheduled. Completely natural.
When you get together with friends, or have somebody over for dinner, about the only thing that's planned is the food. The rest of the time is just spent being friends which could include, getting to know each other, talking about what's going on in each other's lives, doing stuff you like to do, etc... I think church gatherings should be like that. Obviously there is wisdom and guidance needed; you can't get together with believers and just talk about the latest football game or economical crisis and call that your fellowship. You may have to guide your conversations to a certain extent. Thats where your relationship with God comes in.
God really should come up in our everyday conversations alot more regularly. Talking about what the Holy Spirit has been teaching us should be as easy as talking about last night’s Astros game, how your cat had kittens last week, etc… Telling about what Jesus did(is doing) should be as easy and common as telling about what your friend did last week. He is our best friend right? If we talked about the God the way we talk about our friends on earth... wow. A lot more people might know about who He really is and many more people might be inclined to dig deeper. We need to be spreading the word of the Kingdom everywhere we go, all the time(Acts 8:4).
But to be able to talk about God in depth, we have to be spending time with Him. We should seek out His presence and company the way we seek out our friends' presence and company. I know I text my friends on a daily basis (and actually quite often throughout the day). If I would talk to God as often as I text, I know my life would be significantly different and my relationship with God would be alot deeper. I guess I have some work to do.
Joyfully!
~Marissa~
I keep hearing the question, so what does an organic meeting of the church look like? Honestly, I don't know. We are supposed to meet(Heb 10:24,25). But really, does it have to look like anything? Hebrews says we're supposed to exhort one another, but I don't think we have to make the church look like anything. Why do we try to make it into something anyway? Its like we’re trying to control it. Are we afraid of something? I don’t know. But, whenever we try to organize or run church, we automatically put our man-made boundaries, limitations and names on it. I think the only titles the Bible gives the church is "bride" and "body" of Christ. I don't see any reason to add our titles and definitions to that. I'm against giving any type of church gathering a title or name because of the implications that will come with it. And also, when you name something, you automatically divide it from others of its kind. So, when I go to meetings on Thursday nights and Sunday nights, I will say I'm going to hang out with some of my Christian friends. I don’t want any “name boundaries” between me and any of my friends who don’t fellowship with us on those nights. On Thursday and Sunday, we're just friends who have God in common and want to get together weekly to celebrate it and practice being an encouragement to each other. That brings me to what we do in our meetings...
Do we have an agenda? To a certain extent, yes. But it’s never in stone and we're always open to whatever. No, we don't have to sing songs every time. No, we don't have to have one person prepare a word every time. There is freedom to do what the Lord puts on our hearts to do. One night at Guy Ben's we didn't even leave the dinner table. One topic of conversation led to another and we just lets things flow naturally. The Lord had laid on Guy Ben's heart to talk about the church and so we did. We chatted about other things too, prayer together, and watched a movie. In essence, we hung out. Nothing artificial, controlled, or scheduled. Completely natural.
When you get together with friends, or have somebody over for dinner, about the only thing that's planned is the food. The rest of the time is just spent being friends which could include, getting to know each other, talking about what's going on in each other's lives, doing stuff you like to do, etc... I think church gatherings should be like that. Obviously there is wisdom and guidance needed; you can't get together with believers and just talk about the latest football game or economical crisis and call that your fellowship. You may have to guide your conversations to a certain extent. Thats where your relationship with God comes in.
God really should come up in our everyday conversations alot more regularly. Talking about what the Holy Spirit has been teaching us should be as easy as talking about last night’s Astros game, how your cat had kittens last week, etc… Telling about what Jesus did(is doing) should be as easy and common as telling about what your friend did last week. He is our best friend right? If we talked about the God the way we talk about our friends on earth... wow. A lot more people might know about who He really is and many more people might be inclined to dig deeper. We need to be spreading the word of the Kingdom everywhere we go, all the time(Acts 8:4).
But to be able to talk about God in depth, we have to be spending time with Him. We should seek out His presence and company the way we seek out our friends' presence and company. I know I text my friends on a daily basis (and actually quite often throughout the day). If I would talk to God as often as I text, I know my life would be significantly different and my relationship with God would be alot deeper. I guess I have some work to do.
Joyfully!
~Marissa~
2 comments:
You're right, Missy - our churches have too many man-made boundaries. That's awesome you recognize that and are focusing on the relationships Christ wants you to foster.
Great Word, I think you're on to something major here! To be continued......
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