'church'

Strange how so often a common theme seems to run through a whole day!

Today that theme has been simply 'church'. Hardly surprising, I suppose, since in one way or another just about everything I do is capable of being related to 'church'!

But today most of the major activities in which I've been engaged have all had this as their focus. The reading and preparation I've been doing, the discussions I've been having, and even the meeting I was attending - all of them have concentrated my mind on 'church'.

The only aspect of my day that wasn't centred so much on 'church' was the work I was doing in preparation for tomorrow's session with the P5 classes at school. There's a lot of work involved in that: a powerpoint file (which has to be made compatible with their computer), exercise sheets, and a careful planning of how I'm going to maximise the time and fit everything in.

This next part of the 'crash course' on Christianity is all about the Bible. What it is. How it came into being. And the different sort of ways in which it's used.

I don't have an option about these things. That's what's in their syllabus. Which is fair enough: and I don't have any complaints! What a chance to give the Bible a plug! Dispel some negative notions.

But even that has got me thinking, too, about the church. The extent to which it's often not in fact the Bible that informs our whole perspective on God's church.

Take the Bible as it's told - and you wouldn't end up with 'church' the way it is today. That's for sure! There's surely something wrong!

This coming Sunday's services have been occupying some time and thought as well. Sunday morning is all about what 'church' is really meant to be. Already the message God seems to be feeding my soul feels pretty much like dynamite!

Meeting with the local ministers for lunch at least gave me a chance to toss around the sort of things the Lord's been making clear to me.

This 'fraternal' is good that way. It's rare for us to spend the time in superficialities. Generally we get our teeth into something more substantial than the soup and rolls.

Today it ended up being 'church'. What constitutes a body of believers being 'church'? How much of the formal sort of rigmarole do you need before it's seen as 'church? In fact, do you need any of all that rigmarole? Or is it just a hindrance?

Well, we didn't all agree about it all! But the chat was lively and we made each other think. And our hearts were fired and iron was certainly sharpening iron!

One of the guys at the end remarked - we should get our congregations doing this sort of thing! Sitting round a table (not in pews) and talking with one another. I thought, isn't this the way it used to be, the way it was with Jesus and his friends, the way it's meant to be?

All of that contrasted very markedly with the meeting at night of the 'Presbytery': ministers and leaders from the church throughout the city, gathering for their monthly meeting. And I thought again, throughout it all, is this really how it's meant to be?

The first meeting of the new session always starts with worship. It was (so far as I was concerned) a classic illustration of 'church' being done the way it's ... well, 'aye bin'. Very genuine stuff. No doubt of that. But it grated on my soul, the whole thing.

I wondered why, as I sat on through the night. Why? Well, here are some of the reasons, I figured.

It was very passive, for one thing. Very much spectator-sport-religion sort of thing. They even clapped the minister who'd conducted the worship, which I thought was a bit of a give-away. A performance sort of thing, that.

Not that there's anything wrong with expressing thanks to those whom God has given us to minister to our souls. It's just that it felt like an audience applauding the people out front.

It was extremely private as well (for all that it was very much an act of public worship). The hearts of each and every one may well have been wide open to the Lord (I don't doubt that), but it felt like they were closed to one another.

It was, moreover, also dreadfully polite. Kind of, I don't know, prim, proper, thoroughly respectable and formal, with, I suppose, really little room for anything that might in any way disturb the sanitised and rarified rituals of religion going on.

And in some ways, there's nothing wrong with that! It was just the whole thing stood in such a marked and heightened contrast to the full-blown sharing of the heart there'd been at lunch.

It was - I think this was why it grated so - it was, in fact, almost the complete opposite of all we'd known and shared at lunch: and the opposite, too, all that seems so striking and attractive in the life which those who were the early followers of Jesus gladly shared.