Church Alumni
November 9, 2009 by churchless
Filed under Institutional Church
Here’s a great video clip from Recycle Your Faith, featuring Chad Estes of Captain’s Blog.
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2 Responses to “Church Alumni”Speak Your Mind
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When I was “going” to church, it was too much about “going” and too little about “doing.” In the institutional church, I was told that I was doing just fine as long as I showed up to worship service and Bible study on Sunday mornings and the service and fellowship on Wednesday nights. When I REALLY started to inquire into Christianity and a [closer] relationship with God, though, I increasingly felt like that perpetual structure wasn’t conducive of the relationship, fellowship, and communion that speakers taught. It just didn’t add up.
All the time, churchgoers encourage me to find a church. I know that if I do, I will have the same experiences: I will fall into a rut of thinking that it’s all about making it to the service on Sunday morning.
Many times I ask the churchgoers, “Why is it not that the church should find me?” …And they tell me I’m being too cynical and closed-minded. Lols.
I guess I’m a Pondering Pre-Alumni…heh!! I’ve been doing a LOT of pondering, and believe that the Lord is leading me out of institutional Christianity. And so…I stumbled onto this website. I have a question. But first I want to describe “church” as I see it in the New Testament in case my eyes are fogged.
The description from Acts 2:1-47 indicates that they continued meeting after Pentecost with “one accord.” I looked up the Greek and discovered that this word means that they met in the same place, at the same time, with the same passion.
That got me thinking…what “passion” did they all share? JESUS crucified and risen was my conclusion. So in trying to get a glimpse of what new creatures in Christ meeting together originally looked like, I concluded the following:
They talked about Jesus; they looked at Jesus in Scripture; they shared things that Jesus was teaching and doing; they remembered Jesus’ sacrifice in breaking bread. They were married, devoted, addicted to Jesus; they loved being with anyone else who was also attached to Jesus.
Paul indicates in 1 Cor. 14:26 that whenever they assembled together every new creature in Christ was expected to share the word, song, teaching, revelation, tongue or translation that Jesus saw fit to deposit in their mind.
So, on to my question. I’m sure that post Pentecost some of the 3,000 saved that day would bump into each other at the market or the well, and that they’d no doubt encouraged and prayed for each other in that moment. However, this would never have satisfied the new urgent desire to spend time with other new creatures in Christ to share Christ alone. There are too many NT descriptions of Christian meetings that were wholly focused on Jesus to conclude that they only met together on occasion of shopping or entertainment (or work).
So my question: It seems to me that the IC is extremely ordered to the point of suffocation, and the OC is extremely unordered to the point of disintegration. Is there a happy medium somewhere? I’d sure like to visit. I live in the Cape Canaveral area, Florida.
Thanks for your help. Pat