A friend and resident of Oakwood Hall who shall remain nameless (Ryan Walker) asked me visit a website that was just launched by a community of Jesus followers from his hometown. Please visit www.darnthechurch.com and add your perspective.
My comment is number 8 and reads as follows:
"The church is beautiful. It is just the institution that we have come to call the “church” that is disenchanting, imperialistic, distracting, and arrogant. We will only see the fullness of the beauty of the church upon deconstructing its current consciousness and embracing the radical call to be a compassionate, missional people, viewing ourselves as the covenant community of followers of Jesus."
I am still searching for other adjectives and descriptors of the carnality, beauty, and wholeness of the church. What would you include or disclude from my comment?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Comments on The Church.
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6 comments:
Your perspective on the Church can be wrapped up in three sentences? You've barely touched one aspect of a vastly complex issue. There are huge sections of the Church functioning within the "institution" that embrace "the radical call to be a compassionate, missional people, viewing ourselves as the covenant community of followers of Jesus."
T.K. you well know my agreement with some of your points in sentence two, so I know you wont think I'm coming to the defense of the so called institution. I'm just wondering who gets to be a part of the deconstruction? I'm also wondering if arrogance is a genetic trait which gets passed down like brown eyes or a cleft chin. I'm being ironical, no responses concerning sin nature...
If we don't have the grace and creativity to do deconstruction and rebuilding together (not just with a bunch a people who think everything the way we do) then we are equally disenchanting, imperialistic, distracting and arrogant.
Anyway, three sentences? Come on... :-)
jb,
three sentences... yes. that is why i asked the question. so... what else would you include you institutionalist ;)?
I'd include a dissertation. You'd need several of them just to touch the idea of "the institution". I'm saying that it's dangerous to give trite little answers at all.
I guess I read your answer and found it too simplistic to mean anything. I can't add anything or subtract anything when I don't have enough context to know if I agree or disagree with the original answer. For instance, I don't know if you abhor real institutionalism or simply organization of any kind within the Church. Who are the "we" who have come to call this institution the "church"? Americans? Nazarenes? Flag waiving youth pastors from southern Ohio? Moderns? Postmoderns? I have at least 20-30 more questions that need long drawn out answers to satisfy me in order to give you a response that is worth your time.
By the way, I threw in "trite" and "little" above to be condescending since you called me an institutionalist :-)
jb,
i know you did. i laughed.
and just for the record for everyone else reading this:
i am not american (well, i guess by birth i am but i do not pledge my allegiance to the nation for which a striped flag stands), a nazarene, a modern, and for certain i am not a flag waving youth pastor from southern ohio (though i used to be a youth pastor in southern ohio). just had to make that clear!
Descripters of Carnality...
good.
sorry i had too!
trav, i went to your buddy's non-constructive website...;)
anyway, i was reading through some of the comments and finally found one that i agreed with...that basically said the same thing that i was thinking...
then i saw that it was your comment.
bangerrang, peter.
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