Okay, here's a way I'm thinking about ecclesiology these days. I've been plugging words and phrases into this formula:
our church is (or should be) a place...
It's a local ecclesiology, in other words it how I'm coming to understand our assembly of brothers here in this place. I'm okay with that, since it seems that we know the church first of all as local and particular before we understand it in the broader, universal terms. More on that later, but here are some things that come to mind in the little formula:
Our church is a place...
to follow
to grow
to be safe
to belong
to understand
to be understood
to share
to be challenged
to love
to be loved
to serve
to contribute
to worship
to wonder
to see Jesus
to share life
thoughts?
Posts
3 comments:
I rented Trekkies 2 and watched it last night. It's just as difficult for me to watch as the original, having had a former life as a closet Trekkie.
A loose aggregation of Little Rock Trekkies was a safe haven and family for me when I was trying to find a church home post-divorce in the not-so-tolerant early 1980s. In all but about two of the ways described above that "church is (or should be)", they were.
The Trekkies 2 sequence in which about 100 Italian Trekkies - many still in costumes - attend Sunday morning mass during a convention takes care of those remaining two. And it brings up some interesting additions to the list:
to reject sin
to accept fellow-sinners
to commune
to celebrate
to be unique
... and, of course
to dress funny
Not to totally ruin your thesis here, but have you read any of the Gospel & Our Culture Series books? The Continuing Conversion of the Church, The Missional Church, etc?
The reason I ask is because they are attempting to get away from the whole language of "a place where..." I understand your use of the phrase isn't exactly making the church out to be a "vendor of religious goods and services," but it could be misinterpreted that way. I have found my own ecclesiology challenged and formed by trying to get away from thinking about what the church DOES, to thinking about what the church IS. I know, semantics, shumatics, but I think it is helpful sometimes, to undetand the nature of the church, and see how it gets fleshed out in terms of the items you mentioned...
Anyway, reading blogs is much more fun than real work, and I felt like entering this conversation, so there!
Peace,
GKB
GKB, I wasn't sure if I should reply here or try to continue the discussion on the main page. I haven't read the stuff you're talking about, so you're going to have to help me through it.
My initial list of categories shouldn't be thought of as services that the church offers, if that is the complaint, and certainly not as features of our congregation to advertise against other churches...this is an ideal list of what we work for, not what we've got to sell. They are what we, as church, do. I just put it in terms of our church to emphasize that these are things that happen in the church primarily in its local manifestation. (not that these things comprise a complete ecclesiology, by any means)The emphasis is local, though. To me, we understand the universal through our experience of the local, and not the other way around. That's because the local is the concrete, and the universal is the more abstract concept. It seems like the NT gives us much more to work with in terms of particularities than with abstractions. I think abstractions can of course be useful, but not at all without concrete particularites. where do we escape particularity in our source material?
What exactly do you mean by getting "away from thinking about what the church DOES, to thinking about what the church IS"? are you talking about identity as opposed to action? In what ways do we answer the "Is" without the "does"?
Perhaps only we could speak of the potential church in terms of God's action, (although only because of God's particular actions in time)but without human action and response, I'm not sure if there is any kind of ecclesiology to talk about. It seems like ecclesiology is how the ones God has called respond to him. What church is it that doesn't respond? What church exists without doing? It's a pretty existential concept to say our identity is formed through our actions, but I think there's at least some truth to that when it comes to the church.
feed me, GKB, and give me some specifics of what you mean.
Post a Comment