Saturday, April 07, 2007
April 1 - How to deal with church life? - Todd M.
Welcome...
This week in life we started out active and taking time to answer questions by moving our feet. For example: If you grew up going to church most Sundays go to the left side of the room if not go to the right sode of the room. We had a bunch of different questions, some that helped us get to know our "church" experience that we come from and others our thoughts on the "state of the church".
Content:
Two questions to answer in small groups:
1. If an alien came to your house and you had to describe what church is how would you describe it, what would you say happens there?
2. Now define church?
THen we looked at the Biblicla words for church & Ministry:
“Church” is derived from kyrakois which was used in terms of the “House of the Lord”
However, in the NT the word was ‘ekklesia’ – designated a local group of Christians, never, not once church building. ‘ekklesia’ was a meeting or assembly.
Ministry – greek NT ‘diakonia’ – the priestly language that only refers to the body of Christ as a whole. The term ‘leitourgia’ is the NT describeing the old Jewish Priesthood.
We ended our time discussing this bloggers comments:
"I don’t fit in the church world very well. I could go on and on about this, but the reality is I don’t fit very well. People ask me what I believe about this and that with church and the answer is - I am ‘in process.’ What I do know is this:
Matthew 22:34-40
34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
That is my theology. Love God, and love other people. It is pretty simple. Maybe it is hyper-post-post-retro- modern I don’t know the proper trendy term to call it, but it is what I believe. You see I follow Christ - and I try and do what Christ says in his Gospels. So, the most important thing I hear him saying is what he said to the religious rulers(those who ran the “church”) of his time, Love God and love other people.So, as I try to figure out what ‘church’ is, I will keep doing that in the mean time. I want to be part of a church where loving God and loving other people is central to what the church believes.(And in “church” as it currently is this is not happening and so I don’t fit) "
We answered these questions and discussed:
1. Do you relate to anything he talks about in this blog regarding the church? What stood out to you?
2. The writer seems to suggest that there is a disconnect between what a church believes and what it does when it comes to loving God and loving people. Do you agree, disagree or both with the writer?
What did we learn...that there is big difference between the institutional church and the body of Christ. I think it is fair to say that we agreed that we need to be the body of christ.
However, what does that mean for us...maybe we should have a 2nd part to this topic of what we could do...what could we do?
-LiFE -
See you on the 15th, Happy Resurrection and easter egg hunting!
This week in life we started out active and taking time to answer questions by moving our feet. For example: If you grew up going to church most Sundays go to the left side of the room if not go to the right sode of the room. We had a bunch of different questions, some that helped us get to know our "church" experience that we come from and others our thoughts on the "state of the church".
Content:
Two questions to answer in small groups:
1. If an alien came to your house and you had to describe what church is how would you describe it, what would you say happens there?
2. Now define church?
THen we looked at the Biblicla words for church & Ministry:
“Church” is derived from kyrakois which was used in terms of the “House of the Lord”
However, in the NT the word was ‘ekklesia’ – designated a local group of Christians, never, not once church building. ‘ekklesia’ was a meeting or assembly.
Ministry – greek NT ‘diakonia’ – the priestly language that only refers to the body of Christ as a whole. The term ‘leitourgia’ is the NT describeing the old Jewish Priesthood.
We ended our time discussing this bloggers comments:
"I don’t fit in the church world very well. I could go on and on about this, but the reality is I don’t fit very well. People ask me what I believe about this and that with church and the answer is - I am ‘in process.’ What I do know is this:
Matthew 22:34-40
34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
That is my theology. Love God, and love other people. It is pretty simple. Maybe it is hyper-post-post-retro- modern I don’t know the proper trendy term to call it, but it is what I believe. You see I follow Christ - and I try and do what Christ says in his Gospels. So, the most important thing I hear him saying is what he said to the religious rulers(those who ran the “church”) of his time, Love God and love other people.So, as I try to figure out what ‘church’ is, I will keep doing that in the mean time. I want to be part of a church where loving God and loving other people is central to what the church believes.(And in “church” as it currently is this is not happening and so I don’t fit) "
We answered these questions and discussed:
1. Do you relate to anything he talks about in this blog regarding the church? What stood out to you?
2. The writer seems to suggest that there is a disconnect between what a church believes and what it does when it comes to loving God and loving people. Do you agree, disagree or both with the writer?
What did we learn...that there is big difference between the institutional church and the body of Christ. I think it is fair to say that we agreed that we need to be the body of christ.
However, what does that mean for us...maybe we should have a 2nd part to this topic of what we could do...what could we do?
-LiFE -
See you on the 15th, Happy Resurrection and easter egg hunting!
