Struggling with how we "do" church...

I know that many of you wrestle with how we can "do" church in a way that is true to the Kingdom of God and yet compelling to a post-modern mindset. There are so many different ideas floating out there - lots of them are very exciting. Len from NextReformation.com had a post today that shows some thinking on this that is close to home for me, both geographically (he lives in Kelowna, BC) and ecclesiologically (if that's even a word...). I don't think that we need to throw away the church structures that we have developed in the past (at least not yet) but I do think that we somehow have to give expression to the fact that church is a group of people living in surrender to Jesus and His Kingdom instead of a building or a group that gathers at 11:00am on Sunday morning. Len writes...

The Western idea of evangelism goes like this: you repent and get saved, then you come to Church rejecting the world, the Church takes over your life. The Celts did it a bit different: you welcome and invite folks into your community, you minister with and to them, you disciple them and then you baptize them into the body. The Celts also became part of the community in which they were called - literally adopting its rhythms. Thus the converts are not taken out of the world, but left in the world where they can actually do the work of the gospel. The Celts were remarkable at converting whole communities in this way. When is the last time you've seen a whole community come to Christ? And I don't think getting the people in your church re-saved every week counts.

Last night a group of us.. local friends from a variety of church communities, met at a local 180 acre ranch that may become a kind of new monastic community.. we talked about learning community, worshipping community, working and serving community, healing, and sustainability. Most of us have had dreams of this direction for years.

We see the need for church and community to take flesh in new expressions so that the old church can begin to reimagine itself, and so that the world can get beyond the old images of the fortress and walls. We see the need for islands of peace in a troubled world.

Maybe the time has come for a Celtic renaissance, for places set apart where we can care for the outcasts, love one another, learn and grow together as we work side by side, care for animals and for the the earth, model ecological concern and sustainability, embody sacred space, and show a new way of living."

You can read all of Len's post here, but you can't see the diagrams/pictures unless you go here and scroll down to July 13, 2005.