Well, the best laid plans...
I announced what we intended a week ago. It didn't happen.
The back story behind the plan requires too much info but we know of an elderly couple on assistance living in two different rest homes. We intended to take the husband to visit the wife, treating him to a meal out on the journey.
One of our group was injured working out; several others have colds bad enough not to take into a nursing home.
So Evie and I picked up the husband and took him to Subway, which he loves, and met one other gatherer there and gave our friend his choice of the menu.
He HATES the home, especially the food. He clearly had a great time. We love him, even if he's not especially likable.
We are very purpose driven about what we do. This was a "least of these" time. We celebrated the mercy Jesus has shown us.
The reason I put the word gathering in quotes is what we did is no more a New Testament gathering than the Sunday morning consumerist show that most people, probably you, call a "worship service."
ReplyDeleteWhat we did is right out of the teachings of Jesus but it not a gathering in the way our first brothers and sisters gathered. Those gatherings were crucial to the righteousness they lived out. That is why they are important. It is also why attendees of "worship services" find it hard to live out the sort of righteousness Jesus demands of a disciple.
Gatherings, in the day, were not celebrative, they were provocative, inciteful. They provoked and incited love and good works. What we did was the love and good work that gatherings are intended to help every disciple live out in his/her daily walk.
One of the theological failings of missionality is the motion that righteousness can be carried out on the congregational level.
Read Jeremiah 31. It can't be.