A Churchless Faith is not something that I have active sort after but rather something that I have fallen into. Like many others I know I have found my self churchless but with a very strong Christian faith.
This Blog is a diary of my journey, trying to work out if I can and how I can be a Xn without being part of a regular Sunday morning or evening church. I know people who are part of home churches, alternative worship services, and more besides. Yet for me and many others I talk to there is something about these new ways of doing church that just doesn't seem to sit right.
I think much Alternate church can fall into 3 traps
1. The Smorgasboard Faith: This is where we pick and chose which bits of Christianity or Church we want how much we have and how hard we want that to be for ourselves. The potential problems of this include leaving of difficult and import bits. An easy Faith tends to have little impact on our lives and a faith that doesn't impact us and change who we are is surely meaningless.
2. The Eternal Youth Group: This is where we end up starting a church with only those within a couple of years of each other. Where we loose the wisdom and traditions of older people and lose the challenges of making church so accepting that even a child feels comfortable.
3. The Pre Constantine Paradise: This is where we sit around (as I have done) and complain that things would be so much easier if we lived in first centurary Palestine before Constantine had come along. Constantine wasn't all bad, infact mostly good. He unified a splintering church, and combining church and state was just what you did back then, every other religion did it and know one in that time had any notion that this could be anything but positive. Besides a church with heirachies and beuracracy is what necessarily what happens when it becomes really big, which it is. We cannot have a small church structure for a church that is as big as it is now.
So what now?
I don't know. I know I don’t like communal singing, I find learning from sermons difficult and Rituals have never been a part of my life. So when I goto church that leaves me enjoying the Bible reading and the cup of tea afterwards. Oh, announcements are knid of neutral for me.
I do know I want to want respect what has gone before me build on what God has been doing for the last 2000 years. I also know I want to do something new, something fits with me, but challenges and streches me and something that is attractive to other people Christian and non-Christian
Now, I've got to work out where to start...
This Blog is a diary of my journey, trying to work out if I can and how I can be a Xn without being part of a regular Sunday morning or evening church. I know people who are part of home churches, alternative worship services, and more besides. Yet for me and many others I talk to there is something about these new ways of doing church that just doesn't seem to sit right.
I think much Alternate church can fall into 3 traps
1. The Smorgasboard Faith: This is where we pick and chose which bits of Christianity or Church we want how much we have and how hard we want that to be for ourselves. The potential problems of this include leaving of difficult and import bits. An easy Faith tends to have little impact on our lives and a faith that doesn't impact us and change who we are is surely meaningless.
2. The Eternal Youth Group: This is where we end up starting a church with only those within a couple of years of each other. Where we loose the wisdom and traditions of older people and lose the challenges of making church so accepting that even a child feels comfortable.
3. The Pre Constantine Paradise: This is where we sit around (as I have done) and complain that things would be so much easier if we lived in first centurary Palestine before Constantine had come along. Constantine wasn't all bad, infact mostly good. He unified a splintering church, and combining church and state was just what you did back then, every other religion did it and know one in that time had any notion that this could be anything but positive. Besides a church with heirachies and beuracracy is what necessarily what happens when it becomes really big, which it is. We cannot have a small church structure for a church that is as big as it is now.
So what now?
I don't know. I know I don’t like communal singing, I find learning from sermons difficult and Rituals have never been a part of my life. So when I goto church that leaves me enjoying the Bible reading and the cup of tea afterwards. Oh, announcements are knid of neutral for me.
I do know I want to want respect what has gone before me build on what God has been doing for the last 2000 years. I also know I want to do something new, something fits with me, but challenges and streches me and something that is attractive to other people Christian and non-Christian
Now, I've got to work out where to start...
4 comments:
i will be interested to follow the journey.
i am not sure how long one can actually be 'churchless'. I know we can exist outside of structures, but outside of church?...
look forward to reading more
Hello Bing,
Thanks for the comment (almost 2 years later!) to clarify somewhat my questions are not so much about wether we should bother meeting but rather how, where, with whom, how often and what do we do when we meet. Does that make sense?
For Sure. Thanks!
I find it more beautiful if no one is left by themselves after a gathering. I find it more beautiful to hear conversations and discussions after the service that people can learn, grow, be encouraged and be stretched in. Thats my opinion...a few years later...
Mitch
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