BLOG 11/4/13. THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY OF EXILES
Let me continue on the theme introduced in my last Blog (“The Church and the Other Six Days”). To adequately address the issue of the church’s too often failure on equipping the people of God for the other six days of the week, we are going to need to do something like: reconceive, or maybe reimagine, our whole popular notion of the church—and to realize that the church is always a community of aliens and exiles in a foreign land—always. Absolutely. Peter reminds us of this when he describes the people of God as a whole different race of people, who are sojourners (aliens) and exiles in a context that is always warring against our souls (I Peter 2:9-12 in loc.).
We have all probably read that passage many times, but we need to stop and realize the implications of what it says for our understanding of who we are as the people of God, or as the church, or as the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit, i.e., our ecclesiology.
Please note: this says that where ever we are on those other six days, we are in an alien context culturally and socially. It may be a very sophisticated alien context, but it has values that are not focused on our being the incarnation of God’s New Creation in Christ. It is a culture that is always very subtly substituting its own idols for the claims of God’s Kingdom. It is a culture that will always try to seduce us into conformity to its own norms if we want to be acceptable. It would substitute religion for Christianity.
The church, then, is that sabbatical gathering of this community of sojourners and exiles to be reminded again of: who we are, and of what is our calling for those other six days. It is a gathering where we are to be to be reminding each other and encouraging each other of who we are. It is a gathering where the word of Christ dwells richly in our mutual conversations and where we are to be “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in our hearts . . . (Colossians 3:14-16 in loc.).
This is not your typical understanding of church.
This is a whole different ecclesiology where the ministry belongs, not to some clergy-class, but rather where the ministry is from each of us and to each of us by one another. It is a gathering in which we acknowledge the realities of our daily lives and our daily work as agents of God’s New Creation in Christ. It is where we share stories about life and work, about challenges we face in the seductiveness of this world. It is where we rejoice in our calling to Christ, and pray together for God’s kingdom to be coming and for his will to be done dynamically in and through our excellent lives in our present realities, as those who are the bearers of His diving nature.
This is all so counter to the prevailing custodial understanding of ‘church’ and of ‘church leadership.’ It understands that the church does not exist as a hiding place from this present world, but as that community that equips us and continually re-evangelizes us, and excites us for our calling to incarnate that Kingdom and its life-giving present in the whole fabric of our context. The church is not club that generates church activities to entertain us spiritually, but rather is to be a transformational encounter with God and each other week by week.
Our conception of the church must eschew any notion of the church as an escape from the realities of this present world. It must always understand that the church is that thrilling and dangerous counter-cultural community that is the flesh and blood demonstration of God’s new order.
Got it?
