What is church and the community?
Listening to quite a bit of Crowded House stuff...
So far what I figure...
is that church must be based on eternal Trinitarian relationships revealed to us in Jesus
There is an entrance point - that is Christ
There is a reference point - that is the Father
The church is invitational - hence proclamation
Yet confrontational - since you imply in the invite that you are not part of it
The community is perichoretic - interpenetrating, with individuals breaking down in confession and being rebuilt as a community of persons in Christ - one body
Liberalism causes the church to be informal and 'uneventful' - since there is no serious consideration of sin
Legalism causes the church to be only in the structure and events - since the leaders think they can run a system since they are not sinful
True church is a household - where there is interaction and activity
Where there is an understanding of sinful separatedness and those informal interactions or formal events are all purposeful - designed to break down the separatedness between each other, and re-reference ourselves with the Father - hence the events of the Word in proclamation, corporate study, visible sacrament, etc
All this is what it would mean to be Spiritual
The goal of church is unnatural love for one another (grace), lead and exemplified by Jesus, founded on the love for the Father, actualised by the Holy Spirit
or something like that....
8 comments:
Brilliant.
Yeh, that is a good gospel foundation.
just thinking of what you said over on glen's site today about fruits of theology - we become more like jesus when we are close to him.
when are we close to him? when scripture is read and preached, visible sacrament etc - ie, whenever the gospel comes to us from above. these are necessarily *events*
so whatever your church *looks like* in terms of size (house church or large church in building) doesn't matter - the issue is the *event* of meeting the Word of God.
what about close to Him in prayer?
:-)
yes, prayer and fellowship too -they also are times we are close to Christ.
In fellowship we should meet Christ as we meet the Christian (if we follow him - ref the heart and head thing over at Glens) and we are enfolded in Christ as we pray, at the centre of trinitarian life - to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
but these Christ events don't really define the *format* of your church gatherings. all the above should happen, small church or large but crowded house seem to really push the one outworking... which could (ironically) become a new legalism - a new form of trellis being pushed for the vine. don't get me wrong, I do love the work the Crowded lot have done towards reasserting the 'spiritual' side of church as per your definition, particularly with respect to the perichoretic community.
i guess i've a concern about some of the stuff i've read and heard with regards to the place of preaching - preachers only defend preaching cause they want to keep their full time job as a preacher and like the status and that there is no point in preaching and so on. that concerns me.
if you are committed to a three-fold Word (as i am), then rejecting preaching is the same as rejecting Christ. see here:
http://www.cecleeds.co.uk/download.php?file=downloads/sermons/2%20Timothy/20100822am_Rich%2BOwen_2%2BTimothy%2B4%253A1-8_202%2BThe%2BGrace%2Bof%2BPreaching.mp3
enfolded in Christ as we pray, at the centre of Trinitarian life... brilliant
yes there must be preaching - a formal event of preaching - so that we can be sure that the Word comes to us from outside us...
only then can the Word be grace...
I realize God,The Father of my Savior Jesus Christ is The One that brought me to this sight and know it was no accident bc I got here in a tangled path by reading about Rev. Wright and Obama on Fox News website. How ironic I have been trying to sort what is going on for awhile in my life.
Hi PatW
well i'm not sure what i have to do with Obama..
but it's great to see you here..
so let us know if there's anyway we can help
hey Rich
just heard your 2 Tim 4 sermon
great stuff
btw.. can we not add a '4th dimension' to the Word?
the church in itself is also called "the Word of God" esp in Acts
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