I have a dream; it’s about church. Yes, I really am that much of a nerd. But if you have a few minutes I’d like to tell you about it. If you read our earlier post you’ll know that despite the baggage that comes with it, I continue to identify as Christian. For all the flaws in my community it’s still mine and I value both my faith and the people with whom I share it. Now even if you’ve never been in your life, you likely know that Christians have a thing called church. Church is a concept that means different things to different people. For some it’s a building (let’s meet at the church), for some it’s an organization (Anglican Church), for others it’s a group of people (anytime you see the word in the Bible). 250,000 words in the English language and still…
Anyway, when I talk about church I generally mean the group of people. So how does this group of people come together, what makes a group a church? I grew up in an environment that (to oversimplify just a little) taught that it was agreement on theology that made us a church. I don’t really like that answer. If I’m being perfectly honest it’s probably because I’ve grown in a way that has caused me to challenge a few of the theological principles that hold my particular tribe of Christendom together, and since that was the instrument of unity I’m feeling left out. Why can’t we still be a church even though I disagree with some of the things the majority of the group believes? I still love the people, we still profess the same faith in Christ, I still want to accomplish the overall mission assigned to us.
Disagreement over theology seems a stupid reason to break up the band!
So what should hold us together? In my dreams, and one could argue there is a strong foundation in the Gospel for this position, a group of people who love one another is a great starting place. After we have that foundation of mutual love, I think a degree of agreement helps. But where I differ from many is over what we should agree. Where the church of my background suggests that theological agreement is the key, I think that agreement of purpose is a better place to start.
What’s the difference?
If we read the Gospels Jesus seems to be a pretty practical messiah. He healed the sick, he fed the hungry, he cast out demons, he raised the dead. Sure he also taught, but his teachings were less about the high-minded concepts discussed in the theology departments of Universities and Seminaries and more about what it means to love and be loved. I too think that the central theme of our group should be practical. We will still discuss ideas, and even engage in the foolishness of a group of mortals trying to describe the divine. But ideas don’t have to be the thing that holds us together.
If you’ve ever taken theology you’ve likely heard that one of the purposes of church is to provide a community setting for worship. I had one professor who made a point of instilling this idea into the heads of his students. To be fair to the good man, the class was called Worship. Now without getting too off topic and writing an essay on what worship is, been there, done that, got the B on my transcript, let’s say for the purposes of our discussion that, among other things, worship entails demonstrating our devotion to God. To that end I want to share a couple texts from scripture that have formed my thinking on what God wants in the way of service.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,
Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
There are other things, of course. But because of the way I read the Bible, from the character of God I understand as expressed through Jesus and the inspiration I experience from the Holy Spirit – service to my fellow human beings is service to God. When Jesus walked the streets of Palestine he wasn’t handing out books explaining a theory of what the Kingdom of Heaven could be; he was feeding the hungry and healing the sick at the same time as telling them that the Kingdom of Heaven was already in their midst. It’s actually a pretty ubiquitous message in the gospel. So from my point of view, worshipping God is more about doing good for the people around me and less about being right in my ideas about him.
This is actually great news, because the hungry person doesn’t care if I have good eschatology as long as I can make a good sandwich.
So I dream of a church in which people are brought together by a desire to do good for their neighbours. You might say, well that sounds like a service club more than a church. To that I’ll say two things. 1: Ok. If the worst thing you can say about my church is that we spend too much time serving people you’re not going to hurt my feelings. 2: It is still a spiritual endeavour, the love of Jesus is my motivation for desiring to do this. And love is also vital. The church of my dreams is a community bound by love, not bound by intellectual agreement. When I dream of church I see a group of people who would do anything for the person sitting next to them. They would consider it an honour to help their brother or sister, they would look for opportunities to do good and they would treasure the friendship of those in the community. Generosity, mercy and joy are all pervasive in the community I see when I dream.
Now don’t get me wrong, ideas and the discussion thereof still play an important role in the church of my dreams. But that discussion looks very different than what I see when I meet with churches on the weekend. We’ll save that for another post.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another – Jesus
Kingdom Dialogues 