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Being church: What does it mean?

I like the case study I posted yesterday because it makes me think about the essence of what it means to be church. It forces me to ask myself what are the most important parts of Christianity. The fear factor would, I think, send me running to God to know what he would want me to do, rather than coasting along with the status quo.

So, the first thing I thought of, of course, was prayer:

If I were suddenly dropped into a culture that was more openly hostile to Christianity I would immediately run to God in prayer. I would ask him the following:

- keep my family together and steadfast, clinging to God and his truth
- to lead us to those being called out of darkness (1 Peter 2:9) so that we might have a community of support (church)
- to give us wisdom and boldness to speak to those people
- to pray with the new believers: Once He made them part of the church I would begin to pray with them.

I think prayer would be one of the primary activities we would need to do as we were "being church" is such an environment. That fits with what Jesus said, "My house shall be a house of prayer."

I think it would be an exciting adventure to be faced with such a situation. What about you?
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Tiffany said…
"Exciting adventure" is one way to put it! ;) Members staggering their entry into church by 10 min. so that no one suspects a crowd of people entering a home is...adventurous! I've found that prayer and fellowship become very important in those environments. And, unfortunately, conservative doctrines. I think this is because there are no Bible concordances, no devotioanl studies, no homilitics studies to grow the church beyond the infancy stage, so they cling for dear life onto the traditions/doctrines they were taught by an old missionary and preach/teach those every week. Happy New Year!
December 31, 2007 at 5:04 AM
bluggier said…
Tiffany, if anyone can speak authoritatively about "exciting adventure", it's certainly you. I never thought about the doctrines part of it, although certainly that might well become an issue.

JAY
December 31, 2007 at 7:09 AM
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