Continuing to redefine church

Back to the basics. What a simple phrase that is used all over the place...sports, relationships, education...need I go on? Well, we're talking about this as well with respect to the church. It seems that often we can become so wrapped up in the formation of structure -- by that I mean programs, ministries, by-laws, etc -- that we figure who we are, what the point of all of those things are in the first place.

Tonight our church planting team (I use that somewhat loosely...but it is a team with the goal of planting a church) is having it's Thursday night meeting and will be hosting discussion and exploration of the concept of church. We will be thinking through what Brian McLaren says in The Church on the Other Side:

...The church has acted in different ways in history, depending on what was required of it -- it what it was tricked into -- according to the times. For example, on occasion the church has hunted down and killed heretics, while on occasion it itself has been vilified as a heretical organization. It has sometimes opposed the progress of science but sometimes has vigorously promoted progress. The church has preserved ancient culture and dead languages, eradicated ancient cultures and languages, ridiculed and hindered missionary expansion, healed the sick and fed the hungry, ignored the sick and forgotten the hungry, inspired capitalistic achievement, critiqued capitalistic achievement, opposed communism, baptized communism, promoted conservative politics, promoted liberal politics, fought the other denominations, promoted ecumenism, retreated into a subculture, penetrated new cultures...

Sometimes the church has found itself doing opposite things at the same time...For a lot of the time, much of the Christian church didn't seem to ask itself what its mission is, or whether it even has one. It seemed to just go along without any internal gyroscope or hard drive moving it out from the inside.

I believe this befuddlement about mission must change on the other side. The new church must define -- or redefine -- its mission. The specific focus of local churches will vary, of course, according to their context and environment. But I believe four overriding values will move to the forefront of the new church's mission:

1. More Christians
2. Better Christians
3. Authentic missional community
4. For the good of the world.

Very interesting stuff. These could definitely move us back to the basics of our mission. I'd like to take a closer look at some of this stuff in coming days. It should be interesting to see how our group talks about these core values tonight...how they are seen in the Polish context.

Happy Thursday!