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I’m writing a paper on ‘What is the pattern of church life and church meetings in the New Testament’. As part of that I’m reading Banks’ book ‘Paul’s idea of community’.
There’s a fair bit I disagree with in this book, but something I just read got me thinking. If you can’t be bothered to read the whole quote he essentially says that the Protestant practice of having a book at the centre of our meetings is actually something taken over from the Synagogue, and not Paul’s idea of church…
Interested? Read on and please comment – I’d really like to know what people think… Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t normally get soppy about things, but this evening we had such an encouraging meeting as a gospel community that I just had to write about it.
This morning we met together, broke bread before we ate, had some great food, talked about the challenges from the talk on Sunday, talked about things we had to praise God for (and there was so much!), praised God for those things, talked about why we don’t have regular formal meetings (see my blog on the TCH website if you’re wondering what I’m talking about) which led to helpful discussion about how we are going to grow as a community, we talked about some practical things and then a couple of us raised some decisions we’re going to need to make in the near future for discussion.
It has been really encouraging to see people growing, welcoming in new members of the group, caring for each other, getting to know people who don’t know Jesus and seeking to share the gospel and their lives with them.
We are by no means a perfect community! There is a way to go. But there is much to praise God for. God is good and it is such a joy being able to witness him in action.
John recently wrote a helpful blog regarding conversations he’s having with students returning home for the break and the issue of service being at the heart of what it is to be missional (http://legerity.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/being-missional-is-all-about-serving/).
On that note I was reading 2 Corinthians 6 this morning and it got me thinking… do we see the signs of being servants in our lives and our communities?
This is what Paul seems to think being a servant will look like:
‘…as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honour and dishonour, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.’
I’m sure there are various boxes we can tick (truthful speech… sleepless nights!). But when was the last time our servant hearted lives caused a riot (assuming this isn’t talking about Paul heading out into the street with a club to cause trouble)? Do we suffer sleepless nights because we are giving ourselves wholly to others or because we just struggle to trust God and are worrying?
Quite a challenge…
