We all have our ideas of what church is and we’re often told that if you want to be a serious Christian.. or a Christian at all, you are required to go to church. But what is church? Do we have to go to a service Sunday morning, listen to a sermon and sing some songs? Church has been so Westernized that what many of us know as church is a lot of culture mixed in with church. The problem is: what is culture and what is church? Where do we separate the two? If someone from a different culture comes to know Christ, it seems unfair to me, to tell them they have to attend our Western style church services if they want to follow Christ.
In Missional Church edited by Darrell Guder, he states that the Nicene Creed proclaims the church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” Yet the Reformers added that Christian disciplines must be practiced. Charles van Engen puts these terms into action by saying that the church must be unifying, sanctifying, reconciling, and proclaiming. (pages 254-255 of Guder)
If these things are true, if the above are the essentials of what it means to be a church… Let’s say that a few friends become Christian but don’t relate to any churches they’ve ever been to and don’t feel comfortable either because they’re homeless and don’t have nearly the right look to enter unnoticed. If they go about life together seeking Christ, reading His word, confessing to and encouraging each other, telling others of their changed lives and meeting frequently to pray for each other and take communion with what they have. Is this church? Or say the same for a group of refuges or immigrants who don’t relate to our culture.
Does church have to be a service on Sunday morning with one long section of teaching along with singing some songs? Or could it be a group of people biblically seeking Christ together and worshiping him the way they know how?
Emily L.
This has been weighing on my mind a lot lately. I’d like to think that although community is still important, being the church doesn’t have to happen in some designated building. The idea of “going to church” is really intimidating for some people, and maybe the best way to reach them is to step into their lives, worship Christ, and learn to do discipleship in new ways.
i liked this post, i have been deliberating many of the same questions. I believe that church s not just the building, but more or less a community of believers seeking Christ.
This is quite provocative. One thing that I always think about with church is to ask whether everybody there is just like me. If it is, it seems like we’re not yet a community that has been fully effected by the Gospel. When Paul says that in Christ there is no longer male or female, slave or free, jew or gentile, it seems like he is saying that our natural ways of dividing up from each other shouldn’t continue to exist since our identity is that we are in Christ.
This doesn’t go much into the question of practices but it does go into the question of social identities. In the example you gave of people feeling like they are judged because they don’t fit in or dress the right way or what not, this is a failure on the part of the people church wanting to have things their way. It’s an incredibly frustrating experience to be a part of. I know first hand, as I got pushed out of ministry at a church over challenging some of these attitudes because the church people didn’t like the types coming to their church.
Very provocative. I hope many in class weigh in on this one.