In the last series of posts we looked at how a legacy church might transition to a network of simple/organic churches. A less disruptive way might be for a legacy church to run a second track where only those who have vision for the change get involved in the new expression of church. Whichever way is chosen, there are some principles that the people involved need to internalize for the move to succeed. This next series of posts will look at what principles need to be stressed to accomplish this.
The word “church” is commonly used in three different ways.
- The building: I left my bag in the church
- To describe a specific group of people meeting together: New Life Church, First Baptist Church
- A denomination: The Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God Church
While all of these three may be useful terms in that we know exactly what they mean, none of them is a Biblical use of the word (with the possible exception of the second one). In fact the third one, the denomination, may be actively anti-Biblical in that Paul told us not to divide from one another, “I am of Paul,” “I am of Apollos” (I Corinthians 1:12-13).
Photo credit: cuellar (Creative Commons)
While most of us have come to the conclusion that church isn’t the building, we still tend to use it to describe the event, the meeting. “I go to church on Sunday morning.” Again this places limitations that aren’t there in the Scripture.
If this isn’t church, then what is?
The next post will cover this.