The Church

Long board meeting tonight, stretching from 7:15 to 11:30 pm. Good meeting with some good people. Talked about many complicated issues – theological, policy, facility, procedural. It’s amazing the amount of work it takes to “run” a church in the institutional sense. At the end, a friend said something like this: “I’m loving my small group. After being in a small group for this time, I’m more and more convinced that it is what it means to be church. And I’m convinced that all these things that are not part of being house churches, they aren’t what it means to be the church.” Bill Easum wrote:

Now, I wonder what it is in all of the ritual and stuff that raises a concern in your life that maybe you need to refocus? What baggage has Christendom placed on you that you need to unpack and see what for it really is – dribble, if there is any? Refocusing has a cleansing effect to it.  Try it; you might like it.

I love the church, but what I mean by the church is different from what I used to mean. I don’t mean the buildings, the policies, the institution. I love what the church is supposed to be underneath all of that. It’s possible to be the church within the institution of the church, but the institution sometimes gets in the way.