I just
finished reading an article on innovative church movements in North
America. Unfortunately from almost the
first sentence it was apparent that I was in different place than the author. As with anything I read, I eat the meat and
spit out the bones, and this article certainly had plenty of meat, but it just
surprised me how even the most cutting edge of innovators in the church world
still often miss some of the most basic of innovations . It may have been simply semantics, but the
article started out by saying “in our postmodern culture finding innovative
ways to do church is essential” While I agree with the point being made, I
think it reflects a bit of skewed doctrine regarding the church, for If we are
“doing” church, it will inevitably end up just being one of the things on our
ever increasing list of things “to do”.
I understand this now more than ever, for I have just ended a 40 year
run at doing church. It involved
membership in and association with nine different organizations of people that
were all doing church. At each location whether I was an “attender, member, or
pastor” each organization had its membership rules and expectations, its
organizational structures, and systems.
In the best of scenarios these things were set in place to move people
through the system in the most efficient way so that the people could
accomplish the purpose of the organization.
In the worst of scenarios they reflected the shortcomings and weaknesses
of the leader who put them in place, often a leader who has been gone for some
time, but whose influence still permeates the organization because change is
the most resisted thing in the lives of virtually everyone I know.
One of the
primary things that I am trying to keep at the forefront of the work that I
oversee is that we don’t do church we are The Church. Things we do are temporary. They have a starting point and ending
point. Whether events, services, or
ministries, we do them for a period of time (Sundays, or Wednesdays) and then
go back to the rest of our lives. But we
as Christians are the Church not merely members of a church but the composition
of The Church itself. We, who have come
to Christ, are a house made up of living stones being built by the Lord as we
grow in maturity and in our numbers.
The “modern” church for the most part has shed the false doctrine of the
building being the church, so we no longer go “to the church”, but we have
adopted an almost as problematic doctrine of “doing church” which will have to
be shed in order for us to truly accomplish what the Lord had in mind for us in
the beginning. As I mentioned before it
may just be semantics, people may just be used to using certain terms, and the
structures of their organizations may well reflect the living communal nature
of the church, but I have always been a proponent of the concept that you can
tell what we believe by what we say, not what we say we believe but by what we
say, so take a few minutes as you read
this to ask the Lord, The Head of the church if your actions reflect a life of
doing church, or being the church. As
the head of the Church, He will be faithful to answer and to guide you to the
take steps to assume your true identity as The Church.
