Where Is The Congregation, What Is It Doing, and Why?
Darryl from Dashhouse (post here) has a link too and block quote crossed posted at The Dying Church (post here) that bounces off a post at The Heresy that deals with the “The People Formerly Known as The Congregation” meme that is racing around the web and is on the minds of many within the the online Christian faith community. The above sentence may not make sense, but all the above are worth a read and some thought, weather you agree / concur with the bottom line ideas behind the meme or not as some of the posts above are pro the meme and others are more negative about the meme.
We, the body of Christ, have to understand that there are a lot of hurting people around the church (inside and outside) due to what happened to them at the hands of church leadership and church people in the past. In my mind though that fact does not give the hurt person a complete pass as to walking away from God’s church either though as when we are hurt in other areas of our life - jobs, relationships, etc - we work through them and move on - usually getting better jobs, improving our relations, etc. Regardless of who and what is to blame those pains and injuries do have to be dealt with. Ignoring them and shunning the injured does not speak well to how the modern “first world” church is performing. In my mind / in a perfect world dealing with such problems and issues should include both the questioning of institutional forms, the actions of leadership, and personal evaluation of our individual call from God and how it relates to the call of the local body we are currently at. No church is perfect, but no Christian is either.
The ignoring of church problems and personal issues are what leads this blog / web site to write posts like our one on church “customer service” yesterday as the church seems to be ignoring the real issues of the people that come to it - whether the person is “saved” or “lost”.
Personally I found a few satisfying ministries within the body of Christ only after I found a church that let me be the Christian God was calling me to be, instead of the Christian that the other churches, and most of the rest of the church, wanted me to be. Some of those satisfying ministries are directly related / through the church (teaching a weekly class, working in the media ministry, working with a few community focused outreach ministries (VBS, etc) annually), and others (this blog and web site, a sports outreach, writing) are independent of a specific church body. Bottom line for me personally and I do mean for me personally, I know that I am far more effective when I have a organized local body of Christ that build me up / encourages me, which then allows me to serve both within that body and independent of it to accomplish the things that God has for me. I simply do not believe that when it comes to serving God that it has to be, or should be, a completely in or completely out of a set local church body thing.
