This is a hard one to journal.
First of all: It was a great gathering.
But it was a bit of a challenge due to what I at least, think church is. There's not opportunity in this context for me to break down what I see about the church in the Word. Needless to say, I see what passes as the church today as coming from the Middle Ages, not from the Word.
In the Word the church is the congregating of God's people. OT and NT. The church is not a place for believers and seekers to gather for a show.
1 Corinthians 11 does mention what might happen if an unbeliever or an untrained person comes in to a gathering of believers.
One of my coworkers invited himself to our gathering. We did welcome him. Without being prompted, he offered to contribute to the meal. He did not know any of the songs but was patient during song time. He contributed when we asked for prayer requests.
He also joined in our interactive Word time. Interestingly, his remarks were oriented toward justifying his own, well, righteousness. It was as he was speaking that I realized that we have gotten into the rhythm of using that time to, as the Word says, confess our sins to each other, i.e., we find ourselves lacking compared to Jesus and the people of the Bible and speak transparently about it.
Before we ate the meal, we read 1 Corinthians 11 and described the sin of taking the bread and the cup in an unworthy manner. As we walked to the table, he took me aside and said that he didn't think he should participate. The two of us agreed that he should not.
The totality of the experience is still sinking in.
The meal and the fellowship were amazing.
BTW, we continued to share the passages on what Jesus did in the flesh that impress us. We finished up the widows' two small coins and next moved on to the contribution by our youngest participant (11 years old), The Feeding of the 5,000. Good, edifying conversation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, yesterday it occurred to me that what we are doing now feels like the norm to me. Up to then, my frame of reference continued to be what we used to do and what others still do.
I think that is a good thing. But, I'll monitor that.