HI there all. Well I have decided to take the lunge and stop going to Sunday church services as a rule. I find them boring and unhelpful. I don’t want people I don’t know to pray for me during ministry time. I don’t want to lead worship for a group of people who don’t worship. I don’t want to listen to another sermon. I don’t want to exchange pleasantries over tea with people I don’t know. I have decided to pursue a more real church with smaller groups of people I trust and with whom I have relationship. I have nothing to offer the larger gathering at the moment and I don’t feel I am in the place to be a consumer. When I am more healed I will possible re-enter. God is showing me which piece of the puzzle I am. I am still accountable to Andrew Christie, my pastor, to close Christian friends and my wife. So I do not intend to spin off but please pray that I don’t. I want to see the kingdom come but the church seems to be too calcified and concerned with propping up the structures to be able to help God do that. So I want to see where God’s power and Spirit are working at the moment. I suspect it isn’t in the traditional church and I include the Vineyard in that. Church is people and I am going to be pursuing people for church. More later? Comments?
Powered by ScribeFire.
3 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
I’ve always admired your honesty, Duncan. I think God likes that about you too.
I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do. Why be a consumer when there is so little to consume? Why bother to lead worship when people won’t or can’t follow?
I have to say though, not all churches have become institutions concerned only with the structures etc. We have found a very unique church here…I firmly believe that is why God brought us here. And this is no starry-eyed, blindly optimistic statement. We’ve been here 7 and a half years, we’ve had to deal with some major issues, even with the pastor himself. The honeymoon is long over.
Personally our pastor despises anything that smacks of religion, legalism, or what he calls the spirit of Babylon…which is man’s attempt to build a structure that will bring him closer to God. So much of Babylon has invaded the church…sadly so.
I wish you could come here. We are a worshipping church and church (including what is preached) is so relevant to me. If we have to be out of town for some reason and have to miss church I always feel it.
I pray you’ll find that place where God’s power and Spirit are working at the moment.
Hmmm…long-winded here….
I was thinking about the ‘church is people’ statement. I agree that the place where people come together in unity (Psalm 133) is where God’s blessing flows. People can meet together for all kinds of reasons though and that doesn’t make it church.
I’d say church is a place where God’s Spirit can reign and flow unhindered, unfettered by man-made programs or ideas. You need people for that but you need the Spirit first. Else you are in danger of falling into some kind of social gospel which is totally ineffectual.
[...] same old hat again… Sumi, I think you are right about the Spirit of God. God is in the Church and church is where people [...]