On the Church

  I know some of you reading this title will be like, wait a minute, A Christian Perspective on Church?! Brian has lost his mind! We don't need any Christian perspective on the church! You're wasting your time on this go to more important, juicy items such as politics, entertainment, scandals, or even gossip. But, the church?! Yes, the church. It is so important that we have a right theology of the church, because it is our experience in the church that largely shapes our Christian journey and identity. So, the questions remain how should we perceive the church? What is the proper role of the church in the 21st century?

  The word church appears over 100 times, all in the New Testament and mostly in the Pauline epistles. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in Acts 2 was the beginning of the church as everyone was amazed that the disciples could speak to them in their own language. In its early days the church was small, not established, and searching for its place in society. There were no boards, bishops, councils, or even elders. But, as Luke recalls in Acts 2 they knew what was most important, "⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ 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,⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:44-47) During its early years the church also experienced much persecution at the hands of the Roman government. 11 of the 12 disciples ended up dying horrible, gruesome deaths because of their faith. The church had to go into hiding and meet in secret in people's homes for fear they could be arrested and at times even put to death. 

 All of that changed when Constantine came to power in the early third century. The church no longer had to be in hiding. They didn't have to be afraid. The church was now at the center of society, persecution was a thing of the past, and little did people know at the time the church would largely would never be the same. 

  If we fast forward to our modern "western" church two things in particular stand out which I think need to be looked at: 1) Break from the cookie-cutter mindset 2) Return Jesus to His rightful place in our lives.

  Church today has become easy, convenient  and most people can fulfill their weekly requirement in one hour and sometimes even less. We have come to expect the same thing each week we come into worship. From week to week we see the same format, we expect the same things, and we've become very comfortable in worshiping God. We like to worship God this way because it has become safe, easy, and comfortable for us to do so. The ironic part is we worship a God who is anything but safe, and an experience with Him should make us feel a lot of different emotions and comfortable is not one of them. To recover a life-changing experience of worship, I would encourage all people in churches reading this to look to worship in many different ways: traditional worship with hymns, prayers, and the word preached. But, also look to worship in new and different ways and see how God will speak to us when we worship God in dance, art, silence, lectio divina, and seek to worship God in non-traditional places. One final note: one of the biggest poisons in our church today, is the attitude that our way of worship is superior over other forms of worship. We need to as a church judge less and embrace more. Our goal should be to expand our horizon of worship and be open to where God will lead us.

  In Exodus 20 God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. The very first commandment is that you shalt not have any other Gods before the one true God. If we truly live this out, and place God at the top of our lives then everything else will fall into place. Our worship will be pure, and we will live out lives that are effective and influential. When God is truly Lord of our lives, our words, our actions, our time, our checkbook, and our worship will be pure and our church will be truly a city set on a hill. This commandment was given first because if one follows this commandment everything will fall into place: including the church.