A church can be a pretty peculiar thing to consider as it stands in our current society. What does it do? Why does it exist? What need in people's lives and in our world does it fulfill? Where does it fit among the other institutions, organizations, and agencies?
For many of us, "church" is never something we've really questioned or guessed about. It's always been "that thing" that we go to, do, and are members of. But I'm sure there are just as many among us and farther away who look upon the "churchy" world and wonder. Why would people go there? What do they do in there? How do people act when they're at church?
They're good questions. Unfortunately, although most of us may have trouble writing down on paper the answers to questions like that, internally, any of us who have been going to a church for a while have internalized the unwritten codes of "church conduct" that are often specific to each church. It's easy and clear for many just exactly what a person should do, how a person should act, and why a person should "go." Some may even say it's a "no brainer."
But I wish it weren't. I'd be excited to see a group of people daily questioning and contemplating how the church should be, how they should and can be at church, and what "being a part of a church" truly means. My reasoning for this is that too many times I feel that we've settled on the ideas of what church should be about to the point that we forget what it REALLY is all about.
All of this came from my recent reading through the Acts of the Apostles, or the Book of Acts in the Bible. It's easy to read through those 28 chapters and, although amused and captivated, pass off most of the "strange and radical" behavior of the early church as being only typical of the people who had no previous examples to work from, who had the rare energy that only those who are at the very beginning of things have, and who lived in a different time when religion in general was a top focus for nearly everyone.
I wish it weren't so easy to pass off. The Acts churches, in my mind, were the ones who were getting it right. They didn't have any previous examples to go from, so they were constantly consulting the Holy Spirit, God, and each other for direction. They didn't simply decide to add this new "church" thing to the many focuses and activities that they already had going; they let their new found passion, communities, practices, and beliefs become their focus and activity. Additionally, even at the beginning of this whole thing we call church, when reading in Acts (particularly in chapters 8-11), we find that they were dealing with many of the same things we're still dealing with today--conflict in the leadership, scruples over who is welcome and who is not, discrepancies over the laws of conduct and "proper" behavior, etc. The primary difference, however, is that they often concluded in a different way than we do today. The goal to practice and share Jesus' love and salvation with others nearly ALWAYS trumped other concerns, and their decisions were rarely, if ever, based on politics and money, instead of God's spiritual leading and blessing!
So I say, let us continually look at the raw and truthful examples of the Acts churches and consider how we might rejoin them in our own early journey of inviting others into that relationship with a God who transforms our lives in powerful ways! Church, let's get our "Acts" together.
More to come!
Jason <><
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