'Indy Timeline' of Upcoming Events The Face of the Church
The other day I was talking with a local pastor. He was lamenting about the limitations of his church building and the exterior presence it has to the community. A facility he inherited, and believed it was serving as a barrier to what he would like the church to be. With great passion though he talked about how many great people at the core of the church; serving, giving, and experiencing community.As I was reflecting on our talk a couple days later, it dawned on me their issue isn’t the facility. I mean, clearly it is what it is, but I came to the conclusion that isn’t the real issue at all. The issue isn’t the facility, but that the physical structure has become for their church the primary face in their community.
And that has had me wrestling with this over the past few days: Why would we ever allow a physical structure to be the primary face of our church in our community?
Whether the facility is old and outdated for the types of people in the local community or just experienced a multi-million dollar make over, isn’t the issue the same? And I am not an anti-facility type leader. Missional leaders develop facilities as tools, lighthouses, and training grounds to mobilize disciple making around the world. And in doing so, it is a beautiful thing.
And many of us as leaders for Jesus believe that the church is the people. We can quote a great deal of verses on proper ecclesiology and have read a great deal of books from researchers like Dr. Thom Rainer, Christian Schwarz, etc. All very essential, but we often end up acting as if the primary face of Jesus in the community is a physical structure and not the stories of lives changed by the Gospel of God’s grace.
And I believe that one of our challenges as called leaders to influence and impact Indy in such a time as this is to reject any system that forces our hand to establish a facility as the primary face in the community of the Body of Christ. And in so doing limit God’s presence and Kingdom to a building while missing the point of his Body to be the living expressions for the beauty of the local church.
The true face of the local church that will preach a better sermon than most of us preach and fills the gap of any facility in the hearts of those lost in darkness are the people whom encountered Jesus and living it out. We must become the primary “face” to our neighbors of God’s local church.
Aaron Story
BLOG- Practically Speaking
Labels: church, Indianapolis, structure, theology
posted by Aaron Story @ 11:11 PM
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1 Comments:
From Indonesia,
Here, there are those social club which activities include burning nearby churches. These social clubs includes FPI and Hizbut Tahrir.
Church itself is intact because its the body of Christ in the form of a group of believers.
Believers that follow the step of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus the only begotten Son of the most Holy one of Israel Yahweh.
Renovation on burned down churces are not multimillion dollar deals over here. Its a do it yourselft kinda thing.
But you can expect that once rebuild and renovated its going to be better and more beautiful than before.Even if believers do have to change the address of their church place from time to time.
We believe that God works in mysterious ways.
aritonang@sae-a.com
Barukh Adonai yom yom ya’amos-lanu ha’El Yeshuateinu.
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