6. What do we do about the church?
Since I’m a bit uncertain about the meaning of the question stated this way, I will state a couple of similar questions which I hope cover the original inquiry. What is the church? What should the church look like? How should we do church? In my previous answer (blog) I introduced the church in a way in which you are probably not used to thinking about it. What comes first to almost everyone’s mind (I have to believe) when church is mentioned, are organized services inside specific buildings with a relatively large group of people. However, I propose that this is not really church at all.
The church is a local community of Christ followers who are being joined together with one another and joined to Christ himself. It is not a group of people who happen to come to the same building at the same time and sit for an hour or so listening to one person speak but whom have little interaction otherwise. A church looks more like a healthy family gathering together to celebrate Thanksgiving. They interact with one another, get to know one another, encourage one another, help one another, and teach one another, just to name a few things. I couldn’t possibly thoroughly describe what the church is and should look like in this blog post, especially in contrast to the traditional ideas about church. Fortunately, there are books readily available which will help get you going in the right direction. I suggest “Pagan Christianity?” and “Reimagining Church” (both by Frank Viola) first.
This blog post is part of a series.
