THE CHURCH: WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

BLOG 4/26/15. THE CHURCH: WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

If you’re looking for a popular religious society, replete with many activities as your social medium that may call itself a church—you’re not looking for the church.

If you’re looking for an eloquent, posturing clergy figure to charm you with his/her homilies—you’re not looking for the church.

If you’re vulnerable to the glitzy church signboards that seek to lure you into their scene with all kinds of invitations—you’re not looking for the church.

If you’re looking for some ‘denomination’ that will assure you that you’re social and ethical norms are guaranteed—you’re not looking for the church.

If you are looking for some association in which you can seek ‘spirituality’ and yet be somewhat passive, and not have to engage in any costly discipleship—you’re not looking for the church.

If you’re looking for some religious setting where all of your friends hang-out, and where you can happily engage in ‘small group Bible study’ but never follow through into active obedience two the teachings of Christ—you’re not looking for the church. Have I been negative enough?

Church comes from a common Greek word which defines ‘a people who are called-out for some specific purpose.’ It is not a Christian word, but it is a word that Jesus employed to denote the people he would ‘call out’ to himself (to his person and his mission), and for the specific purpose of demonstrating the New Humanity, or the people of the New Creation, that he had come to inaugurate right here and now in this present earthly scene. It is first of all a calling to himself, a calling to make your dwelling in him, and to have his forming word dwelling in you and shaping your life. It is a calling that is not safe, but will make huge demands on your thinking and behavior. It is a calling to enter into his New Creation by forsaking all of the broad way of human religion, and to take a narrow path that leads through the small gate but into a whole unimaginable new reality, which he calls: the Kingdom of God, and which is his New Creation.

The church is the community, or the colony of those who have taken that path. It is the community of those who have Christ dwelling in them, so that his life and teaching take on flesh and blood wherever they are. It is a community in which every follower of Jesus becomes, in turn, Jesus to one another. It is costly. That life of discipleship requires that we forsake all other lords and loyalties and become the very children of the Living God. It is a community whose calling is to demonstrate the radical New Creation lifestyle as, say, spelled-out in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes (which, you will note, includes the willingness to suffer persecution for the name of Jesus, and to be peacemakers). It is the community in which we demonstrate the healthy, self-less,  reconciling relationships—first of all with each other in love, but also Christ’s calling to love our enemies and those who are enigmatic to us and who don’t share any of our New Creation values.

The church, because it is the dwelling place of Jesus by the Spirit, also shares his missionary passion to communicate his unimaginable love and forgiveness and grace to all of those persons whose lives are separated from his. The church is, in terms I so often quote: the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity, and can never be passive until every person and ethnic group know of the love of God in Christ. … And where do you find the church? You find it wherever you find one or two (or more) others who are consumed with their love for Christ and their mutual desire to live lives of obedience to him, and so to encourage and nurture each other as they share their lives and the Word of Christ with each other—you find the church in surprising and unexpected places and relationships. And the church exists in innumerable unexpected places globally.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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