Living sacrifices

This post is from the defunct blog "Dying Church"

Pen comments below:

I guess I agree with the need for freshness and newness in church life -- I am just not so sure euthanizing churches is the way to go about doing it...

Yes, I think he's right on one level. It doesn't make any sense to euthanize a church in order to build another one that doesn't want to die. That's so efficient, so pragmatic. But what if a church wanted to die, not to build another better church (althought that might happen as a by-product), but just because God was calling them to? I keep thinking about Abraham and Isaac. The main issue isn't that Isaac had to die. The main issue was that Abraham was willing to put him on the altar. Abraham was asked to be willing to give up what was most precious to him. When he was willing to, God said, It's okay, you can keep him. The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar. I can't help but think that a lot of us (local expressions of the church) are crawling back off the altar before God has a chance to say whether we can keep what we have or not.

Comments

[Pen]

I can work with that much better. Euthanizing to me communicates efficiency over calling. I am enough of a traditionalist to like the language of sacrifice. and when you talk about living sacrifices crawling off the altar -- you have me. The church has to be more of a call than a business. In my current appointment we are re-visioning. We are seeking to do something that is more recognizable from a biblical approach as opposed to an MBA approach.