What is church anyway?
I do not recall many times when my heart was right with regards to the church structure we have in our culture. I actually quite despised “organized religion” (as I called it) for many year (many, many years). This disdain ebbs and flows even today and sadly seems to grow sometimes. Let us pull you in, sit you down, schedule your singing, praying, giving, and then preach at you. After this, we shall use manipulation to pull you down front to “be saved”. And this is required of course – if you do not go down to the front, well then God never actually saved you.
There are churches who even allow you to “be saved” every week if you so desire.
So what does this mean? As I know I have stated in the past, this makes church service seem fake to me. It is a show and not anything more. Yes, I realize my heart is wrong but I also believe that the system is wrong. This brings up the question – do we change the existing system to not feel like a show or do we construct a system based upon some other example? Or maybe how do we do both?
The examples of the house churches in Cuba and China are of great interest to me. I want to experience examples of these things. I want to understand, first hand, what they are experiencing. I found a few books that I may purchase in the future but books are always different than personal experience.
I do not know what the answer is. I am not even sure the question I ask, is the question I want answered. This complicates matters significantly. Without a clear question, the answer will remain elusive.
One scripture we can look at is in 1 Corinthians 14.
1 Corinthians 14:26 – What should you do then, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each one has a song, has a lesson, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all these things be done for the strengthening of the church.
How do you accomplish something like this in a church of 100, 1,000, or 10,000? How can each one have a song, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, and interpretation for the strengthening of the church?
If only…