the way i see it...long post

A friend of mine and I were talking via email and I just began to express my heart about where I feel I am on the journey, and it came out so concretely that I wanted to post it. Forgive the length. Hope it encourages you. It did me.

“I’ve been on a journey for the last five years and it has taken me to a different place in my walk with God and my understanding of “church.” I probably identify most with the “emerging church.” Mostly it means that I haven’t given up on the church yet, but don’t believe that the modern church that we have seen functioning up to this point from the last 100 years or so is a good representation for the world today of what Jesus meant when he said “I will build my church.”

I see the church as a people, as a community, as a group of believers/followers of Christ in life and in practice. It’s about bringing our faith and our lives into agreement, not just saying we believe one thing and living another. We were never meant to just “go to church” but to “be church.” In Paul’s writings, you see where he makes the mention of the “church who meets at so-and-so’s house.” I believe that’s because the church is who we are, and where we meet is secondary to what and who we are. If we are not followers of Christ, where we gather doesn’t matter. It becomes a “form of godliness,” without any power to affect change.

I believe that I am, in that context, called to help people along their journey of faith toward Christ, especially those who have struggled with the modern construct of church. There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people who love Jesus, but don’t like the church. But when I read the scripture, I see what the church is supposed to be, outside of the power structures, the buildings and high-pressure sales and program tactics that the modern era attached to it. I believe there is a returning to the mystery of the faith that the early church fathers wrote about and experienced. It is not supposed to be a place where it’s all figured out into a three-point alliterated message or four spiritual laws. Faith is supposed to take belief, a leap, not proof after proof something is true before you believe. Even Jesus said to Thomas that the truer blessing was for those who did not see, but still believed. It seems modern Christianity tried to wipe out all mystery and need for faith in their desire to prove that their faith was legitimate and trustworthy.

I do have a theory about it all though, and it’s only a theory, but I believe as we look at the whole of scripture and down through history, we see that God reveals himself to each culture and time in a way that they best can understand. I believe that this is why we see a progressive revelation of grace and faith through the scriptures, because ancient Israel couldn’t handle learning it all immediately. This is one reason why Jesus was said to have come in the “fullness of time,” when it was best for the message to come and be spread when it could best be done. I believe that in the same way, the modern world starting with the Enlightment era and the reign of rationalism needed a revelation of God in the way they best could understand him. So He came to them in propositional doctrines and systematic theologies so that they could define and understand God. It was a time where they needed to be able to “prove” to themselves that their faith was true. But now our culture has once again changed as we look at the philosophies of today’s culture and world, it does not trust the “authorities” to explain away all the questions, in fact questions sometimes are more welcome than the answers. I believe that in the midst of this change in our world, God is coming again and trying to speak to our culture from a new perspective, one of relationship, one of grace, one of simple returning to faith, to experiential worship and connection with a loving God.

This is where I’m called. This is who I am. The call to pastor or shepherd the people of God has nothing to do with a paycheck, title or building. It has nothing to do with even a ministry. If I was never called “pastor” again, even if I never went to church again, I would be a pastor, for that is who and what I am created to be. I even find myself pastoring whoever I am around and work with. I may not have a “full-time ministry position.” But I am in full-time ministry, it’s my life. It’s not about a check that proves I get reimbursement. In fact, even if I plant a church or pastor formally again, it very well may be that I will not receive a full-time salary from it or leave “secular employment,” not because it couldn’t grow to provide for me, for it may, but because I feel connected to the workplace and not being surrounded by a spiritual bubble, per se. I believe I can be a much better example to the people God brings me by being “in the world” with them. I no longer believe in a separation between sacred and secular. It is what we bring to a place or situation that makes it either one. I bring God with me to work and he makes my work sacred.

I believe that if we plant a church, it will be a community of believers/friends who desire to be disciples of Jesus and will walk the journey of faith together. And it will probably have a building sometime, but the only reason we’ll go to a building is because we so believe in experiential worship and helping people connect with God in all their five senses, not just singing, sitting and listening, that we’ll need space to be able to be creative in our expression. But the first core value of our church should be that church is not a place, it’s a people and if we veer off of that value we will cease to be who God has called us to be.”