“Sometimes we hear our friends talk in moony, romantic terms of the early church.  ‘We need to get back to being just like the early church.’  Heaven help us.  These churches were a mess, and Paul wrote his letters to them to try to clean up the mess.” (Peterson, Practice Resurrection)

“If we permit- or worse, promote- dreamy of deceptive distortions of the Holy Spirit creation [the church], we interfere with participation in the real thing.  The church we want becomes the enemy of the church we have.  It is significant that there is not a single instance in the biblical revelation of a congregation of God’s people given to us in romantic, crusader, or consumer terms.  There are no “successful” congregations in Scripture or in the history of the church” (Peterson, Practice Resurrection)

At times in my life, I have lost trust in the church, rejected it, walked away from it, written against it, critiqued it, worked for it, gotten paid by it, bashed it, loved it, planted it, cultivated it, and more.

Over this time, I realize that my understanding of the church is extremely important.  Too often, I looked to the church with with unfair expectations that lacked a biblical grounding.  Church, I thought, was supposed to be perfect, meet most of my wants and needs, be centered in Christ without any entanglement in sin, deeply spiritual, and generally idyllic.  When it failed to meet these criteria, I was left with 2 options:  1) criticize and critique it (and thereby, I would often remove or distance myself from that tangible community); 2) romanticize and  mystify it (i.e. remove the theological dream of the church from its tangible reality).  Over time, neither of these options satisfied.

Don’t misunderstand me- engaging in critical thought on the church and embracing the mystery of the church are both important.  However, these things cannot be separated from the tangible, living-breathing, social and local, worshiping community.  For so long, I struggled with this tangible, living-breathing reality called the church.  It had too many warts and hang ups.  Truth is, it was easier to critique the imperfect bride of Christ than to be part of it.  If I privatized my faith, dabbling in occasional conversation with family and friends, I did not have to do the hard work of becoming part of the “body of Christ”.   I reasoned, as a believer, I was part of the mystical body of Christ while refusing to engage in the tangible body of Christ.  But biblically and historically, God’s people have always been a social and tangible reality in the world- warts and all.

It has been in the context of the church, the real, living-breathing community, that my faith has been sharpened the most.  Reading books, talking to friends, writing blogs, listening to sermons are all great and helpful.  But they easy.  They engage my heart and mind, but not my humanity.  It is in the context of the church, I am challenged with difficult people, actual arguments, differing personalities, real needs, and so on.  This context, better than any other I know, helps me to grow up in Christ- taking up my cross, submitting my my brothers and sisters, encouraging and being encouraged in the faith, forgiving and being forgiven, etc.

I admit, that I also find my workplace, the neighborhood, “the world” as a context for growing up in Christ.  This is important both for my maturity in Christ and the mission of God in the world.  And there are many Christians and churches, who in avoiding the world, seriously hinder their faith and neglect God’s mission.   But this is the church scattered, it is not the body gathered around the Christ’s body.   I have certainly learned that I cannot be the church alone.   It is both too easy and too difficult.  Mostly, it is not God’s intention.

“I want to look at what we have, what the church is right now, and ask, DO you think that maybe this is exactly what God intended when he created the church?  Maybe the church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the stature of Christ.  Maybe God knows what he is doing, giving us church, this church.”  (Peterson, Practicing Resurrection)

If pastors only carry moral sayings in their pockets and go through the parish sticking them, like gummed labels, on the victims of the week, there will be no good pastor work; they must learn how to be gospel storytellers…  The storytelling pastor differs from the moralizing pastor in the same way that a responsible physicial differs from a clerk in a drugstore.  When and ill person goes to a physician, the physician “takes a history” before offering a diagnosis and writing a prescription.  THe presumption is that everything that a person has experienced is relevant to the illness and must be taken into account if there is going to be healing.  The clerk in the drugstore simply sells a patient medicine off the shelf- one thing for headaches, another for heartburn, another for indigestion- without regard for the particular details of a person’s pain. – Eugene Peterson

God does not call us to love the world. He does not command us to love everyone. (yes, I just said that) God, the Bible says, loves the world. God loves everyone.

But the second greatest commandment is to “love our neighbor.”

The question, for thousands of years has been, “who is my neighbor?” Jesus himself got asked this question. And yes, Jesus greatly expanded who we are to think of as our “neighbor”- pagans, enemies, the poor, the unclean, etc.

But I would like to ask a different question. Not, “who is our neighbor?” But, “why neighbor?” Why not just command us to love the world, love everyone? If that is the nature of God, why not command us to do the same?

We do not have the capacity to love the world, to love everyone. God does. But we do not. The command to love our neighbor is a profound statement about what our love is to be like. Our neighbors are the people that God has placed in our lives. They are real, and tangible, and close. They have names. They are our family, friends, co-workers, and literally neighbors.

I think we have made a huge mistake in expanding the word neighbor to mean “everyone.” When we do this, we turn our love into an emotion without much content. Love becomes a feeling we are supposed to have, but a feeling that is incapable of changing the world. I believe that God called us to a much more powerful and tangible kind of love.

God calls us to love our neighbors. To love the people he has placed in our life… but to love them well. This is a tangible sort of love, expressed in action- time, meals, visits, phone calls, prayers, play, shared experiences, and so much more.

God does not call us to love the world. But He has called us to love our neighbors- the people He has placed in our life. But He has called us to love them well.

Our energy is not meant to be spent on trying to love more and more people. Rather, it is best spent on loving the people in our live better- in a way that changes things.

In what ways to we over and under contextualize the gospel?

In other words, if I went down to Mexico and began talking to people about the kingdom of God, or the love and forgiveness found in Jesus, but the whole time was speaking English… that would be a ridiculous example of under contextualization.

Or, ifIwas trying to help military men follow the ways of Jesus and begin a relationship with God, but supported the ideas of violence and hating your enemies, that would be an example of over contextualzation.

Or, in what ways are do you think we need to oppose the cultrue we live in, and in what ways do you think we can “go along” with the culture we live in???

I had to run an errand the other day for church.  Basically it consisted of swinging by a few houses of members of our congregation to pick some things up.  To make it to 5 houses took me well over 3 hours… and I was at each house for less than 2 minutes.

A few years back I was living just outside Chicago.  I re-connected with some old friends and was looking to connect with a church as well.  It turned out that my friends were making a 45 minute- 1 hour commute to attend Willow Creek’s mid-week service.

These are more dramatic examples of things I do every day/week.  In an age of transportation (and consummerism), I pass at least 5 local congregations in my neighborhood to attend church.   Sure, maybe it is what it is.  And maybe I ask annoying questions.  But driving around the other day made me wonder:  How “local” are our churches?

The definition of local:  1.pertaining to or characterized by place or position in space; spatial.

It seems that  our church communities are no longer “characterized by place or position”.  They are characterized by other stuff:  style, theology, likes/dislikes, etc.  But communities of God’s people are hardly characterized by their local.  (If they are, it is in only a very general sense- how much I am willing to spend on gas).  This is important to me because I believe that community (at least the sort of community that God desires for His people) requires proximity.  Community after all, demands time and space.
Against this back drop I remember stories my grandma has told me.  Well, maybe not stories, but parts of stories.  In parts of her stories she can name every family on her block.  And with each family came the names of parents and kids, stories, and shared memories.  Other stories of my grandma included walking two blocks to church every week.  And all church stories included people, stories, and relationships the exuded community.  Not everyone in the neighborhood went to church.  But everyone at church lived in the neighborhood.  Sure, times were very different.  But we still live next door to neighbors and down the street from worshiping congregations.  What I struggle with is the quality of our relationships with both our neighbors and within our churches.
There is no doubt that community is at the heart of God’s intention for His creation- salvation itself is communal.

So I wonder if we can re-imagine a local church.  What would it look like if our church building was in the neighborhood (think of the closes church to your house/apartment)?  What would it look like if all the members of your congregation lived in the neighborhood?  Would your church community look different?  Would your relationships with your non-Christian neighbors look different?

What do you think… should this imagination inform us?  change us?