Skip to main content

food to grow


I think I chose this picture for today because I am hungry, so let's make this blog a quick one so I can go eat lunch. This was taken at a New York Deli just off Times Square on April 7, 2007.

I have been thinking a lot about what exactly church is. I have many friends and online discussion acquaintances who admit they are disappointed at the state of the church today and have chosen not to be there anymore. They say they find fellowship in other places, like having dinner or coffee with good friends, being honest and real with each other about their states in life, and finding support and acceptance there that the church sadly does not offer. While it is great to have friends like that, is it church?

Last night I came up with a definition of church that so far seems to work when I look at the Scriptures and the words of Jesus: It is a community where I am being challenged to be a more mature disciple of Jesus and where I am making other people disciples of him as well. I think the trend in the contemporary Western church setting all too often is to forget about the deliberate maturing process that is supposed to be happening, and we become more of a social club where we are comfortable just being ourselves and stop at that. Disciples never stop until they are made into the image of Jesus and along the way, they make a point to pass on all the lessons they are learning so that others around them can mature and become people who serve others (leaders) and are living examples of Jesus as well.

Tell me your thoughts on what church really is. Just click on Comments below.

And now...LUNCH!

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I thought I could comment on a definition of church, since no one else had. By the way, I do like your blog and the insights it gives me into your life. Your definition of church is quite good, but I'd add that it is a group that seeks to worship. And there are so many expressions of that. So maybe I'd sum it up by saying we are about worshipping [not just music] and learning as disciples.
Later,
Yreit
8:13 AM
Alexander said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
2:50 PM
Matte Downey said…
I would clarify that my definition of becoming a disciple of Jesus would include worship because Jesus always glorified the Father. Good point, nevertheless.
3:11 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more