A little while ago I stumbled upon “Beer, Barbecue, and Bible Study“, and more specifically the post “About Home Church“. It’s in response to a post on “Real Live Preacher“; “If we could do church“. (Sorry for all the links.) I wont go into detail as you can read the posts in full from the links above but I just wondered what folks thought about the subject.
The basic jist seems to be that they are not happy, for whatever reason, with the way institutionalised church works so they thought it a good idea to go and start their own. Churches of course have their problems, they are made up of people like me for a start which is always going to give you grief, but can you just go off and form your own variety of church? Would it actually be church? Is there still / was there ever any value in institutionalised religion?
I must confess these are somewhat loaded questions to which I already have at least some form of opinion on but I wondered what you thought.
Over to you.
Whilst I can agree with the sentiment behind what is being said in the post about ‘If we could do church’ I do think there are many advantages of having structure and organisation to a church body. When there are people who are payed to work for the church then they are freed up for tasks that they could not do if they had another full time job as well. I also believe that specific people have specific annointings and giftings – so while it may sound like a nice idea for everyone to be doing the preaching, that may not be the most effective way forward for the church.
I very much do not like the idea of people going off and starting their own church just because they are unhappy with the workings of the church they currently attend. Sometimes churches get caught up in difficulties but if the answer to dealing with those were to up and leave and form a church where those issues don’t come up, I guarentee that further down the line something similar will crop up. We can either run away from stuff or we can work it out – I believe in working stuff out because it is better in the long run.
I must admit Bob, that i have an uncomfortable feeling with the idea of people feeling that they could go and form their own church. From reading some of the posts, it appears that one of the guys is getting ideas down for how he would do it….and that’s the core of the problem.
If a person felt that they needed to go and do church differently because it doesn’t suit them, then isn’t there a potential pride issue there? The message that comes out is, i don’t like the way this church does things, i’m going to go off and do it my way!
Just changing the environment might not necessarily do much for the heart in the long run…personally i would rather we are humble and submissively giving issues up to God and praying for our leaders, than looking for ways to make things better for ourselves.
As I mentioned in the post, it was something of a loaded question. I believe that there are very few circumstances which should lead you to leave a church. Unfortunately, as with much of the rest of life in our society, Church seems to be becoming more and more like a consumer product that can easily be disposed of or exchanged. This is obviously a far cry from the family and community which it was designed to be,
Families have up and downs. There are good points in the relationship when all is going well and there are times when you simply do not want to be with each other. But the bottom line is that you are family and nothing can change that. This is part of the reason why we are called to be family as Church. I could chat on all day about this, in fact I can feel another post coming on�
Family is about relationships, Church is about relationships, relationships need to work. You simply will not find a church that you are 100% happy with 100% of the time. That is not the time move on but a time to show maturity and grow together. Sorry, I will stop now.
It�s too late for me to write anything that will make sense so will keep it short and sweet.
I agree with what has been said but I think done in the correct way and for the right reasons starting new Church’s can be positive. Lotââ?¬â?¢s of examples of this all over the place (check out Rob Bell). Whole host of thoughts running through my head but will save most of them for now; one of them though is a picture of a church that is real and relevant to normal people. Not sure I have seen it in the flesh yet but if I ever will then there are 3 options:
1) I need to get involved with the church I am in and help aim for the picture
2) I need to leave the church I am in and find the picture somewhere else
3) I need to do what is under discussion and build the picture myself
Hmmm so what should I do? Will leave it there for now. Good and bad things about all of those options which I look forward to discussing with you people soon. Night.