Tuesday, June 20, 2006

church is a pain?

These quotes of Jason Clark were posted on NextReformation.
…Church takes place when groups of people get together with other people and do something outside of [their] own interests…[and in doing that] what we start to find is that community, church, fellowship is inconvenient, it’s costly, it’s about other people, it is organised, it is planned, and it’s intentional – some [of] the things that we’re all allergic too…

One of the reasons 55,000 Christians [across Europe] are leaving church every week is because – the problem is with the church, but [it’s] also because we will not pay the price of orientating our lives around following Jesus together…
While I cannot speak to the accuracy, I certainly think Clark has the right understanding. We still have the club mentality. We must understand that we exist for missions. The church represents the Kingdom of God breaking into the world. It's out of that understanding and passion that then springs right living, discipleship, etc.. Until we grasp that and our utter dependence on God to do that, we can only try in vain to polish and recycle our programs. Some of us are unfortunately pretty good at that. This only delays the time it takes to fail and subsequently increase the pain we feel when we fail.

For a bit more on the topic, see Tod Bolsinger's NT Wright quote.

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