A Beautiful Church

A Beautiful Church

The Church began as an oppressed and persecuted people. However, they also were a dynamic, incarnational, Spirit-filled and multiplying disciple-making community. 500 years later they became an institution and things changed dramatically.

A quick glance through church history, especially since Protestantism, will reveal that denominations begin in much the same way the early church began - as a dynamic, incarnational, Spirit-filled and multiplying disciple-making community. However, as those denominations grew they quickly became institutionalized with hierarchies, power and control systems, along with ways to determine who is in and who is not allowed inside the organizational membership.

While I am no longer a part of the Church of the Nazarene, I have not left the Church. I am more committed now to God’s mission than I have ever been. It is my desire to see an awakening of dynamic, incarnational, Spirit-filled and multiplying disciple-making communities of faith. Nowhere in Scripture are we told to remain in human created systems. We are called to remain in Christ. We are called to gather with the community of faith. We are called to make disciples. We are called to baptize. We are called to go into the world. However, nowhere are we called to remain in human governance systems. Those that say we are called to remain in human governance systems are trying to preserve those systems.

I realized this weekend that every single thing that is celebrated in the New Testament Church is a part of my life. I gather regularly with followers of Jesus. I make disciples and am being discipled. I celebrate the sacraments of the Church. I am held accountable. However, I also realized that everything that seems created to sustain the systems of the gathered - the things that fill pastors and their families with stress each week - are gone from my life. I am no longer burdened by all that once burdened me. I am free in Christ.

I am called to call people to what once was in Christ’s beautiful Church. We can recapture what it means to be a dynamic, incarnational, Spirit-filled and multiplying disciple-making community of faith. Throw off whatever it is that hinders you and run the race marked out for you. You and I are called to be a part of the Body of Christ so let’s BE that body. Let’s determine what illnesses exist and fix them. Let’s figure out how to eliminate what his hindering us, what sins easily hinder us, what human systems are getting in our way, and then get on with being the Body of Christ.

I currently have 12 stitches around my right collarbone. A skin cancer was removed that was much bigger than I knew. There are things about the way we do church in America that started out good but have become much bigger cancers than we know. We need women and men with the courage to call those things out. They cannot be tolerated any longer. People are dying and we are holed up on our campuses, in our cubicles, offices and homes, afraid to love without agenda. It is time to love like Jesus and become the beautiful church Jesus sent the Spirit to empower us to become.

All I ask you to do is go back to the book of Acts. Look at the early church. Let their focus become your focus. Let their approach become your approach. Let the way they loved shape they way you love. Let the Spirit give you eyes to see His Church as it was mean to be. You don’t need what the dominant approach to church tells you that you need to be that dynamic, incarnational, Spirit-filled and multiplying disciple-making community of faith.

I want to be very clear. While I may have left one way of doing church, I did not leave the Church. While I may have surrendered a denominations credential, I have not been released from my the call of God on my life. I will give my dying breath to love the people around me and to use every resource at my disposal to call Christ’s Church to expand its imagination for what is possible as a follower of Jesus.

It is time for the systems of the church to change.