Monday, March 17, 2008

What is church?

Out of Ur has a good article on the church, not as an institution, but as a body of believers. Here is a nice little snippet:

“This is what highly institutional consumer Christianity fails to grasp [methodology versus Spirit empowerment]. It reduces ministry to a predictable machine where the right input results in the desired output, and then invites religious consumers to engage the test-engineered institution for their spiritual nourishment. It is also the assumption behind a good number of the ministry books, conferences, and resources we produce every year. But I don’t believe the Spirit of God is laying dormant waiting for the institutional church to compose the right BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) so he can be unleashed the way a pagan god is conjured by an incantation. God is a person, not a force. And his Spirit does not empower programs or inhabit institutions but people who were created in God’s image to be the vessels of his glory.”

He goes on to ask a number of very good questions. By all means, read the whole.

I see that Alan Knox has linked to it; here also with some good commentary.

1 comment:

Jonathan Erdman said...

Interesting. I have never thought to draw the comparison between the consumer-oriented, market-driven church and pagan incantations that are meant to conjure the gods!