A Manifesto for Church

Another tag, this time by Heather….at least it solves the problem of what to write about. 🙂

I’ve been tagged to write about what I think a good church should look like. Here are the rules, according to Barry, who started this thing:

Rules:
1. Post to your blog on the subject “A Manifesto for Church”, outlining your thoughts on what an ideal church would/should be like. Posts can be as detailed or as short as you like.
2. Include a copy of these rules.
4. Put a link to your post in the comments to this post.
5. Tag at least 4 other people.
6. What happened to rule 3?
3. Ah, here it is.

So I thought about just writing, “What Heather said”, since her thoughts on this were so insightful. But I realized (or “realised” as Heather would put it) that would be a shortcut and not require any thought on my part. Then I thought about writing down, “The New Testament.” Again, too much of a shortcut; plus, much of the N.T. was actually written to correct problems that were already occuring in the early church.

So…umm…let’s see…(thinking, processing….)….

…..

Okay, I think I can do this. But first, a couple of disclaimers…

First of all, I have to say I’m even a little uneasy with the idea of saying what “a good church” should look like, because God has so re-shaped my definitions in the past few years to see that there truly is only one church. “A good church” still carries the connotation of an institution, when THE church is an organism; a better way of looking at it from the start is to see ourselves as an expression or gathering of the Body of Christ, or a community of saints. Also, I’m stumbling over the word “ideal” a bit, because I know my thinking isn’t all straight about this yet…and for me to describe the “ideal” church sounds like I think my definition is the best one, like I’m the “ideal church guru” or something. I’m not sure I even trust what I’m about to say…so take it for what it’s worth. 😛

That said…this is the picture in my mind of what a healthy community of Christ-followers might look like:

1. It is focused on following a Person more than a creed. We must remember that our roots go back farther than Christendom, farther back even than the early church in Acts. The roots of the church go back to a group of guys following a rabbi named Jesus around the dusty hills of Israel. These were the original Christ-followers. And they were not following a set of beliefs or philosophies. They were following a Person. They lived life with Jesus, learned from His teachings, and also learned from His actions. It was a relationship. Belief and doctrine are important, but what is more important is that we be true followers of the Person of Jesus Christ, and we should be trying to pattern our lives to reflect that.

2. It is a “centered set” rather than a “bounded set”. I’m borrowing some pages out of The Shaping of Things to Come here. Most churches are bounded sets, meaning they have established boundaries and perimeters, where people are measured by whether they are “in” or “out.” A “centered set” is more about placing Christ in the center of who we are and what we do, and giving people access to come near Him. Some will tarry more distantly from the center than others do, but instead of trying to get people to “join the club” and come inside our boundaries, we will be focused on simply trying to get people to draw nearer to Jesus.

3. It is missional, incarnational, contextual, and fluid. Lots to unpack here. Missional means the people have a shared sense of mission to bring Christ’s love to the people around them. Incarnational means the group seeks to infiltrate, participate in, and become part of the existing larger community to share that love, similar to the way Jesus came as one of us. We infiltrate, we don’t displace; we function within the existing community to form communities of disciples. Contextual means we adapt to the context of the community we are in, to make Christ real and tangible to them; we aren’t a “cookie-cutter” model of a church–we fit the flavor of our surrounding culture without compromising the Scriptures. Fluid means we can change shape and expressions to adapt with times and seasons, reinventing ourselves over and over as the need arises, in order to stay effective in our mission.

4. It shows unconditional love and acceptance the way Jesus did. The community recognizes and embraces brokenness in people, and allows its people to be broken while together we follow after Jesus, Who is our healer and mender.

5. Even while being missional in nature, it is a place of mutual encouragement, ministry, need-meeting, and fellowship for the saints themselves. Our gatherings should have a sense of family, or to borrow an analogy from sports, a “huddle.” They should be times where we strengthen one another, help each other out, and belong to one another.

6. It encourages and promotes the participation of all the saints. Even though there may be a specified leader, the atmosphere should promote the mutual encouragement of one another to be active in ministry, both in the gathering and in the larger community.

7. There will probably be a point 7, but it will probably require its own post. Wait for it, wait for it… Stay tuned.

Okay, let the tagging begin. I tag:

KarenKool, because she wasn’t tagged the last time, and made a wise crack about Job being her favorite book of the Bible.

Aaroneous, because I never tagged him before–at least in the blogosphere.

Kansas Bob, because I think he’ll have something to say.

7catz, because she’s a fairly new reader and I want to know what she will say.