If I Were to Start a Church - 08/14/2016

WARNING PREACHY…

If I were to start a church…

This is now the third time I have come back and started over with what I had wrote.  It's Saturday 13th at 10:13am.  I just left an elders meeting and am stoked about the vision I just heard.  I'll not detail everything but this is what stands out to me.

Churches can often be known with false identifiers.

1. Systematic Theology
2. Buildings
3. Style of worship
4. Personality of preacher or congregants

However, a church's identity should be solely created by the narrative of God as described from Genesis to Revelations in the Scripture.  Every part of the ministry of the church should be focused on communicating that identity to the congregants and the world.  In her preaching, her praise, and her practice, everything should communicate the identity that God has created in us.  And to this I give a hearty Amen!

Rather than deciding on a narrative that we like, we need to humbly accept the narrative that God gives.  Rather than singing songs that please me, I should sing songs that remind me of His story, and rather than have a lot dry liturgies that a church "aught to have", instead our liturgies should communicate the reality of our resurrected savior.  

And in all of this, nothing changes in our churches except our emphasis.  In other words, we don't do things just to do them, we engage in the things that we do because we are just being who God has called us to be.  Our identity is so formed by the narrative of God that everything we do now has purpose and a meaning.  And if it doesn't, then we discard it as something that is outside of who we are as the church (i.e. the people of God)

So if I were to start a church, I think I would start here, communicating who we are as a redeemed people of God, who is very intentional about who His people and church truly are.

You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” (Exodus 19:6)

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  (1 Peter 2:9)