Monday, May 22, 2006

Questions, a journey, life as a christian and the church?

about a year ago I started to really question what it means to be the church. It didn't make sense to me anymore. I would worship the same way (sing worship songs), listen to some dude speak for 30 min. and then go home. OR as a youth pastor I would pimp this same structure out but the reality of it was - it started to make less and less sense. Was God truly a part of this worship experience? Why did I feel numb and bored with church?

God then put in on my heart to really dig into the heart of the church. Was this biblical? Is this really what God had set up the church to look like? did it have to look this way? Why do we feel guilty if we don't "go" to church? Why do I feel like I don't belong in the way church looks?
then i discovered that there were other people who felt the same way and so we began to study what it means to be the church. (check out the-table.net for a very brief look into our adventure). I got excited!!! It was really simple! this pic of the "body of Christ". The more I studied and prayed the more God revealed. The more God reavealed the more excited I got. The questions kept rolling in:
What about the role of the pastor? is the church really an organization? if we are going to be organic then can you plant a church or does it just happen?

What about worship? wasn't the style of worship as we know it orginally a pagan thing and then God set up the tabernacle/temple as a means to please us? God told me once that as I do the things I enjoy - that is my worship. Should people feel pressured to worship (church style - thats the way it feels sometimes) OR should worship just naturally occur? - this is a part of my most recent adventure but the other part of my adventure deals with what it means to be a Christian.

What does it mean to be a Christian? Don't get me wrong - I am not questioning my faith but I am questioning the way I live out my faith - the way I live as a disciple of Jesus. I know what I have been told or even what the church culture has told me it means to be a Christian but to tell you the truth this doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem right to - it doesn't feel like i am living the way I was created and the way he has created His Church to live. I don't know! I just seem to get more and more excited the more I dream as to what it means to live passionatly and radically for Jesus and then even more excited when I think about a group of God's people living this way. Oh yeah, then what if we trusted God to use us in crazy ways. we looked to him to be the head of the body, to lead us, to move in our lives and other people's lives. I get so freakin excited the more I dream but I get incredibly bored the more that I play church or play Christian.

So, What does it mean to be a Christian (a disiple of Jesus), to be the church, and have our lives truly be a life of worship to our God?

Does this make sense?