{"id":13970,"date":"2011-02-16T11:30:37","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T17:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=13970"},"modified":"2011-02-15T18:54:58","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T00:54:58","slug":"what-is-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/02\/16\/what-is-church\/","title":{"rendered":"What is “church”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mike Mercer<\/strong><\/a>, one who has taken up the task of Michael Spencer at iMonk, has a great post about church and what\u2019s going on today \u2026 and it meshes well with my post this morning.<\/p>\n

My take on what has happened over the course of the last forty years is as follows. In evangelicalism in particular, we have raised a whole generation of Christians who were discipled not so much by traditional local churches as by\u00a0parachurch<\/em> ministries and churches that have become dominated by the parachurch ethos. That ethos is not \u201cChurch\u201d but \u201cMission.\u201d And so what we see today is the fruit of that.We have many communities of faith that would be better described as \u201cmissions\u201d rather than \u201cchurches.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Campus Crusade for Christ, Navigators, InterVarsity, Youth for Christ, and a thousand other parachurch ministries have been the true engines of growth in evangelicalism over the course of my Christian life. Their emphasis on \u201cevangelism and discipleship\u201d influenced those who developed the church growth movement, the Willow Creek movement, the church-planting \u201ccommunity church\u201d type movements, and the more contemporary examples we see today, noted in the newspaper article. Traditional Protestantism defined the church as a community where the Word of God was truly preached and the sacraments truly administered.\u00a0Today, \u201cchurch\u201d is defined by many as a community that practices evangelism and discipleship.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t totally disagree, and the emphasis on mission in today\u2019s congregations is likely a reaction to a lack of that emphasis in more traditional congregations.<\/p>\n

However, this leads to some problems. What, for example, would Paul say about a \u201cchurch\u201d that consists wholly of those age 25 and under? Or any \u201cchurch\u201d that exists primarily to reach a particular demographic? Or a \u201cchurch\u201d that, for the purpose of outreach, shapes its preaching and \u201cworship\u201d (i.e. music) after a particular culture rather than shaping it around the Gospel? (That is not the same as saying our worship and religious styles will reflect our cultural context.)<\/p>\n

I think, frankly, that the Apostle would have problems with this approach. Certainly, in a broad sense, Paul saw himself as an\u00a0\u201capostle to the Gentiles,\u201d<\/em> while others were\u00a0\u201capostles to the Jews.\u201d<\/em> And he did say, in 1Corinthians 9, that he was willing to adapt his approach to reach as many as possible. That was his mission\u00a0in the world<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, that was not what he said \u201cchurch\u201d is about. When Paul gathered people from the various backgrounds he had reached into the church\u00a0, he\u00a0 brought them\u00a0together<\/em>, and insisted that the ethos of the church was learning to accommodate to one another, accept one another, and become\u00a0a cross-cultural community in Christ<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0Almost every epistle he wrote is designed in part\u00a0to reinforce this ecclesiological perspective.<\/p>\n

This is an entirely different vision of the church than we see in many congregations, whether traditional or \u201ccutting-edge.\u201d There is a\u00a0breadth<\/em> to the church as well as a height, a horizontal element as well as the vertical dimension. It is not just about bringing people into relationship with God through Jesus and providing a place where they may feel \u201ccomfortable\u201d because we have accommodated to their cultural expectations.\u00a0It is about bringing people into a community that requires that we learn how to relate to all different kinds of people and teaches us to love one another\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n