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The Church God envisioned
Written by Lara Mohn
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According to Viola and Barna the Church building, the order of worship, the sermon, the pastor, the Sunday morning dress-up, the ministry of music, tithing and clergy salaries, baptism and the Lord’s supper, and Christian education all have their roots or have been formed by pagan culture. The Church was supposed to be a Christ-centered, transforming, all-member functioning, vibrant, thriving, authentic community. But through the influences of pagan culture it has been institutionalized, facilitating individualism and consumerism. While reading I feel how the practices of the Early Church appeal to me. Too often I feel like in Church we can easily hide ourselves. Too often we don’t have to really participate. And I do believe that God intended for us to function like a real family. We miss out on that when we only warm our seat on Sundays. I often find myself longing for the deeper connection with brothers and sisters that the Church today often lacks. At the same time I don’t think it is wrong to have a leadership system that is somewhat different from the Early Church, as long as it is empowering leadership. And I don’t think the Church service, as a place to gather, sing and listen is bad in itself, as long as this is not the sole thing that makes up the Church. In response to the culture by which it is surrounded, I believe the Church will always be influenced. The Church is the body of believers, and their culture is a part of them. These influences don’t have to be wrong. In fact, it would be legalistic to think we would have to do everything exactly as the early Church did it. And I don’t think this is what the authors intended for us to do. So the real question is not if we practice Church in the same way the Early Church did. The real question is whether the pillars of what the Early Church was about, are still the pillars of our Church today. I believe it is worth asking the question what God envisioned when He started the Church and evaluating whether our Church looks like that in any way.
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The unsettling idea that our Church today is not the way that God intended for it to be, plays through my head while reading ‘Pagan Christianity?’ by Viola and Barna. What has happened? Did we really allow for the Church to be polluted by pagan culture that badly? Apparently most of our traditions come from pagan culture in some way.
Comments
But what bothers me most is a question I read in another book the other day: "Did Jesus look for worshippers or disciples"? I get the impression our churches major on worship, but it seems to me Jesus ordered us to make disciples. But of course this has everything to do with the focus on the Sunday worship service that you already noticed.
For me the book pagan Christianity once more confirmed that church today is not the right way but just a way, just one of the tools God can use to reach out to people.
It show that we should not depend on our western ways of Christianity, our Sunday services and organisations. There are so many other ways, so many other glimpse's of Christ hidden in so many cultures God can use as tool to reach out to people.
We are the church is the most important statement we can make, from that we can enter a fellowship of any kind to focus on Christ.... he is the ultimate and final goal.
Being one with him, he is us we in him, knit together with all the others who are one in him is the living breathing church we are called to live in.