Evie is sick. It started to hit her early yesterday afternoon and she pushed through a difficult day until she could push no longer and then had a very bad night. She is what is called in some organic church approaches, our person of peace. She is the driving force organizationally, to the degree we are organized and she provides most of the glue in relationships in our intimate fellowship. So, even if we could have met with her snoozing in the bedroom, it could not have worked so, first thing this morning, we sent out texts and made phone calls and, as the song says, called the whole thing off. (My music is very, very old.) At the moment, even before the fresh expression would have started, we are vegging in the living room staring at a fire in the fireplace, listening to holiday music on the radio and hoping to recoup from busy weeks and prepare for the next one. For me, the whole last month at the store was mega sales and very busy and stressful.
As I was walking the world's greatest church greeter on the golf course this morning, I was thinking about how different our concept of gathering is from what is normal for most churchians today.
I had an email in my mail box this morning from the Pennsylvania campus of the seminary advertising an event, asking pastors to put the note in the church bulletin. Wow! A church bulletin. What a blast from the past! Between emails and texts and the intimate nature of the connections we share in our community of gatherings, we have absolutely no need for a bulletin and I haven't thought about one literally for years.
One other observation about the bulletin is that we would never ask someone to devote kingdom passion and energy to do a bulletin. When you consider how Jesus describes what will matter on the Day from Matthew 7 and 25, don't you fear that many who thought they were pleasing the Lord by doing the church bulletin may be among the surprised to hear, "Away from me." I do have that fear. Jesus is very definite in defining righteousness. Producing bulletins for a church doesn't seem to fit into His definition.
While the greeter and I were out sniffing and stalking squirrels, I was also thinking about Lance's recent eNews questioning if we need to find new things to count.
While I definitely appreciate the question, I'll ask the question of what early disciples counted. The answer is, really, just about nothing.
My concern about counting is that doing so assumes that quantity matters in God's Kingdom. From what I see in the Word, what matters can't really be counted.
Lance suggested we could count people sent into (pastoral and other forms of) ministry. And I don't take pleasure in criticizing Lance"s theology, but it seems to me, that that idea is precisely opposed to a central teaching of the New Testament. In the Word, every follower of Jesus is a priest and there is absolutely no such thing as a clergy or a pastor.
When we gather here we don't count anything and we all send each other into ministry every time we gather.
Hmmm.
Maybe that's what makes this fresh.
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