chaoticsoul

I’ve been thinking a lot about the church lately, what it means to be a church and what God originally intended the church to be.

I think a lot of this stemmed from a conversation I had the other day with some friends regarding their church in another town. I’ve heard reports from this church before, but this time my wife and I were both really enthralled by what this church is doing. To tell the story very briefly, the church was started by very wealthy individuals, but when they decided the location to meet they specifically chose the City Rescue Mission, where the poorest and most downtrodden people of the city live and are being rehabilitated. Because of this, the church is filled with very rich influential believers sitting beside addicts and prostitutes. And everyone is accepted, regardless of race or economic status, in the same group of believers that minister together and cry out to God for each other in prayer. It was really encouraging to hear that a place like this exists and is going strong.

So it just got me thinking about what it really means to be a church. As best I can tell, it seems like the main purposes of the church are to Worship (ministry to God), to Disciple (ministry to believers), and to Love (ministry to the world/justice/evangelism/mercy). I know there are more books than I could even comprehend written on this subject, so this is definitely nothing new. But it definitely makes me wonder if there’s ever been a church that balances all three of these well. It seems like somehow because of our fallen-ness we can never quite get it all in balance for more than a brief period of time. But it’s worth trying…

No profound insight today… just some rambling thoughts going in my head.

And also, check this out if you get some time. I heard about this the other day and was really intrigued. It’s Bill Hybels, discussing the discouraging results he received from a large scale study of the spiritual maturity and growth of his church members. It’s really interesting, and again just points to the fact that as good as we’re doing, we’re still falling way short of the goal of bringing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Bill Hybels (from the Leadership Summit)