Table of Contents | If you have major interest in the nature of the Christian community then investigate perspectives in several entries found here. This is the first one and they are all entitled The Church Room. Enter these rooms and you will find a viewpoint wherein the church doesn't attempt to tell people what they must believe but what they can believe and what a difference it will make in their lives if they do believe. At the same time, these entries will embrace the fact that there are other understandings of the church. Nearly 100 images of the church are found in the New Testament. The stereotype of a church as a community of saints exists because the purpose of the church is misunderstood. Church people are often criticized for their behavior. Clergy not excepted. Have you heard of the person who refused to join a church because there were so many hypocrites in the membership? The pastor said, "Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder. And, if this is true, one more won't hurt. We'll gladly accept you as a member!" But the point is that such criticism ignores the real purpose of the church. It is not a community only for those who have already achieved or attained sainthood; it is for those who are on the way. It is not made up of people who think they are better than anybody else but of people who know they ought to be better than they are and who belong to the church because it is trying to help them to be better. The church is not made up of people who think they are perfect but of people who are sure they have found the perfect model in Jesus of Nazareth. At its best, the church lives on the exiting and dangerous boundary where the future is breaking into the present, where the old is passing away and where the new is coming to be. It is at work where God is changing the obsolete, old order and opening up new horizons into the future. Where is this future breaking into the present? Where is the old passing away? Where is the new opening up? The future is breaking in where the common scourges of poverty, disease, social inequity and illiteracy are being challenged. The old is passing away wherever new coalitions of conscience are cutting across the tired boundaries of race, class, sexual orientation and gender. The new is opening up wherever there is a bias for the least and wherever there is a burning partisanship for justice and equality. Wherever this is happening in tiny colonies of hope, God is there working to bring into being church. Wherever the events of God's new creation are erupting into the stream of history, there is to be found the first fruits of God's creativity and graciousness. When the church becomes a place where the barriers of language, culture, race, class, wealth, gender and sexual orientation are transcended then it is a community of belonging. When it is a place where every conceivable option for living is considered then it is a community of meaning. Both of these fundamental questions must be explored to understand "church!" |