Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 May 2005 07:51:03
I recently read “The Shaping of Things to Come” by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, a book on the development of Missional Church in the 21st Century. I must admit I struggled through some parts as I found it a bit text-book like, but there were aspects that really put one of those light globes above my head. I'd like to share one of these...
In heading towards describing how a Missional Church would look the authors spend some time analysing church, as most of us know it today (what they call the “Christendom-mode” church).
They state that one of the flaws of church today is that church is dualistic. “It separates the sacred from the profane, the holy from the unholy, the in from the out.”
Elaborating further they write “We talk routinely about the ‘world out there.' What else can that mean other than that we, the church people, are ‘in here'! This dualism has over 1700 years created Christians that cannot relate their interior faith to their exterior practice, and this affects their ethics, their lifestyles and their capacity to share their faith meaningfully with others.”
This challenged me, and I could see, yes, we do that in my church. We talk about putting the busyness of our working week aside to spend that hour at church on Sunday morning or for any time of fellowship with other church members. A lot of the language we use makes it sound like there is two worlds, our working world and our church world, and the working world is the least important of the two (I s'pose it's different if your working world is some form of ministry in the church, but for most of us it isn't)
If it is a reality that our everyday concerns receive little attention in the church, then it perhaps leads to the conclusion that the church isn't really interested in whether or how we might minister in our working lives.
I have been contemplating how I could minister more in my working life and, more interestingly, doing a 180, I have also been trying to think of ways that we could acknowledge the working lives of the members in my church. What would a church be like where people didn't leave their working lives behind to come to church? And to affirm the ministry in peoples careers, would it mean the Sunday morning worship would be changed in some way?
If it's already happening, I'd love to hear about it and I'll let you know if I come up with any answers