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mollah-yo chingoo..

I think the church is the people of God who are participating in the mission of God.

a called and sent people of the missio dei

btw, did you see erika haub’s response to dan kimball’s post? good stuff.

http://erika.haub.net/the-church-that-came-to-me/12/

The assembly of those who were “set apart”. We as fallen creatures make things worse adding more things to this simple definition. Although the contribution of the local culture must be included in what the church will look like.

kokjong maseyo… na nun kimchi an mashyoyo

I mean I’m not currently at this moment doing so… I have some in the fridge just in case the mood strikes me though

Like single people who think marriage is all about sex, or traditional cultures that thought marriage was all about child bearing, I think our focus on the practical can make us miss the obvious…

So here’s my $.02: the Church is not about growth, it’s about love, because the church is Jesus’ family, brothers and sisters born of His blood. I think love normally results in growth (even in biological families) but one can grow a community on things other than love (like a common cause or common interests).

So I’d guess that the definition of church has something to do with being Jesus’ family, and the purpose of church (I think) centers on the command to love. This is something both traditional and progressive churches can lack. The human tendency is to try to sweep this aside and focus on either growth or orthodoxy…whichever is hip in one’s circle.

I think Leo has it right. The church is the body of Christ, those born again into the the kingdom of heaven, those who have set their souls on following Jesus and doing as He commands. That is the church. It was founded in love, the love of the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, and both Father and Son to their creation. One of the final commands Jesus gave to his disciples was to love one another and then to share His love with the world.

The church, then, was founded in love and love was seen as its greatest command, that without which it could not exist. As far as the forms its particular incarnations take, well, that is secondary . One of the most influential churches I’ve seen is Redeemer Presbyterian, which is a very traditional church, but the head pastor of this church conveys very well the love of Christ to his audience and that is the big draw of this church. Other churches may look different, but that external appearance is secondary, though perhaps necessary to reaching a particular people. Love, though, I would say, is the foundation, function, and goal of the church, for the kingdom of God is founded on love.

Note: One could also say that following Jesus is the goal, but it is more than just following Jesus that is the goal. Rather, it is doing as he says, also, and he says very specific things, with loving God, your brothers and sisters, and the world as the foremost among his commands.

Hi Wayne, I hear ya. And I can see how the language of “loving one another” can be used as an excuse not to reach the lost…

But at the same time, I think evangelism that isn’t born out of and motivated by love for a person isn’t really good news… Growth that isn’t the result of love might not be the kind of growth Jesus is interested in. Which is why I think commands to love outnumber commands to grow the church, not that these things are at odds with each other, but that there’s an order and priority here.

Anyways, these are just words to describe what we think is true. I think we’d both agree that loving the church and loving one’s neighbor is a high priority for Jesus, and I think we both agree that not all religious growth is necessarily the kind of growth Jesus is after…and that there is a kind of growth that Jesus wants.

Peace!

Love may not always result in growth, whether in families or in churches, but without the “order and priority” of love as first and foremost among the virtues and the primary focus and reason for our ministerial efforts, any growth that occurs will not necessarily be the growth that is desired. I think that’s the point that Leo is getting at.

When you say “love makes martyrs”, did you mean the struggles of the pastorate? That particular wording made me think more deeply about the nature of love. One ministry group I attended had as it motto, its theme of live, “die to live”. I think that’s appropriate concerning the nature of love. To love is to continually die. “I die every day, brothers….” To forgive someone who has wronged you is to die, to quell one’s temper in the face of minor irritations is to die, to put another’s need over your own is to die…

So, martyrdom, in a certain sense, is a necessary consequence of loving. What I think, though, that becomes a problem is if the the “to” part of the equation never seems to happen, but one lives in a continual sense of dieing without ever feeling that one is truly living. Success, in this case, or feelings of success, can give one that sense of life, or the appreciation that what one has done actually is leading to life, that makes the necessary dieing feel worth it. Getting that feeling of success can be hard in some situations, particularly if everything in one’s life is new, just starting out, and everything just seems to be a struggle all the time.

Yet, as I know from personal experience, that doesn’t mean that one should strive for the success apart from that which makes the success actually successful. So, first things must always come first, and the method for achieving success is what ultimately makes the success fulfilling. I know I’m speaking in generalities, but I’m saying it this way because I mean it in a general sense, although I’ve experienced the above situation personally on many occasions.