“Church: Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral” Sermon for Oct. 13, 2013-Preview

Our Sermon Series this fall continues to challenge the statements of the Jeremiah Journey about the things that get in the way of doing church effectively.  We are putting those challenges side by side with Scripture to ‘test the spirits’ to see what is from God and what is affecting what we do.

Looking ahead to Sunday’s Sermon, the text is Ephesians 2:11-22.  A good site to pull up the text online is http://bible.oremus.org/.  The sermon series this fall is about those things that keep up from doing our church work effectively.  What attitudes from the surrounding culture creep into our congregations and get in the way of Jesus’ Way?

The challenge from the Jeremiah Journey is as follows:

Hypothesis: A very common notion of "church" today considers church as primarily a place where certain things happen; or as a vendor of religious goods and services designed to meet the individual's self-defined needs. Where these notions are primary, a congregation loses a sense of its connectedness, interdependence, and community. 

Each of these notions leads to limited expectations and unsatisfactory participation patterns, restricting the church's vitality and witness. The future of our church depends on a more robust, focused, and shared understanding of the church as a body of people, called by God, and sent on God's mission.

-From “Discovering Our Missional Context”

            We may not intentionally think of church in this way, but there are underlying presuppositions to what we think and do.  Anybody remember “Intro to Philosophy” trying to get us to come to grips with what our Philosophy of the world is?

            Consider these contrasting phrases:  We say we “go to church”, like we “go to the store” or “go to the movies”, but we do not say we “go to the family”.  We ARE family.  Shouldn’t the church, by its very nature, belong to that category?  We ARE church., we are not ‘going to’ church. (but going to heaven?)  It becomes a personal entity, not an external category defined as “places I go for stuff”.

            These sermons are challenging because they are forcing us, as a church, to try and see the structure of our assumptions about church and where those assumptions come from.  The take away is this: 

1.      Truly seeing what parts of the sinful world and corrupt culture surrounding us are undermining how we make “church” happen.

2.      Deconstructing those worldly and corrupt influences from the life of our congregation.

3.      Restructuring with a Spirit-driven Purpose that becomes the grounding and hallmark of this “neighborhood in God’s Kingdom.

 

I did a presentation a couple of weeks ago for the Middlesex County Long Term Recovery Group on mental health services that we are going to fund.  I used the phrase “Spiritual Health Professional” to attempt to describe myself to the social service professionals that I was presenting to.  I was trying to find a way to connect what I do as your minister with their work.  And I think I played right into the challenge of our church being a ‘vendor’ of religious goods and services.

But more about that on Sunday.

Peace