The Church of Christ “Pattern” – Adventures in Missing the Point

The point is Jesus.

The point is not church.

Church is a community of people focused on Christ and working together to build each other up through using our gifts to grow in Christ-likeness.

If you focus on church, which is what we did, you don’t get Jesus. If you focus on Jesus you will always get church.

There is a pattern for the people of God and it isn’t imitation of the early church. The early church was an imitation of Jesus. To be like them doesn’t mean replicating their practices, it means embracing and embodying their person.

Examples of discrepancies

And the truth of the matter is, we never actually embraced their practices anyway. Instead, we embraced culturally influenced similarities. For instance,

• They met in homes – that is a different arrangement that produces a lot more mutuality than rows in a big room.
• Their gatherings were less formal and more participatory – this leads to more people using their gifts for the benefit of the body and maturation in Christ.
• Their gatherings were very small (under 20 in most cases) and that leads to more intimate sharing and conversation.
• They had more obvious Holy Spirit movement through prophets and tongue speakers.
• It was heavily focused on mutual edification and love (1 Cor 12-14) in a way that is largely absent today.

We didn’t even meet the goal as we defined it

These are significant because we never did what we said we were doing. Even though I think the aim was wrong, we always said we hit our mark. But I really don’t think we even hit the mark on the wrong target.

We need the right target – Jesus.

Let’s aim toward him and see where he leads us. That requires giving up control. That requires making some hard decisions and that requires giving up some of what we are all too comfortable with when we gather. But none of that will happen until you focus first on Christ and growing in Christ together.

Once you do that, the rest will fall into place.

Thoughts?