I can see it on their faces when they come in. That look of surprise, bewilderment, and fear. “Oh, no! This isn’t a ‘church’. It’s a family!” People visiting our Sunday morning worship gathering are often looking for and expecting a ‘church’. You know: some worship music, a place for the kids and/or youth, and […]
Category: ecclesiology
I often hear that in Pentecost the curse of Babel is reversed. But this is not true. Babel is overcome, but not reversed. The idea that Babel is reversed goes something like this. Because humanity, in its pride, sought to raise themselves to God’s level, God confused them with multiple languages and they were scattered. […]
A Tribe ≠ The Church
“The church in its profoundest expression is the gathering of a people who are able to sustain one another through the inevitable tragedies of our lives. They are able to do so beause they have been formed by a narrative, constantly reenacted through the sharing of a meal, that claims nothing less than that God […]
It seems there was a bit of confusion and concern about proposing communal discernment. And that’s OK, it is a difficult thing to understand and from what I can tell it is even less often practiced. On top of all of this are the countless instances of spiritual abuse, if not outright physical and sexual […]
Too often the efforts of church planting and evangelism in unreached places, goes by the term ‘missions.’ But when a group of believers is sufficiently gathered, we then say that a ‘church’ has been established. The linking of terms in a before-after type of relationship has often been propagated by mission agencies themselves. But is […]