I have recently been reading some of the Early Church Fathers for another class of mine, and you know, they said some ridiculous things. Like, for example, the promotion of virginity and sexual abstinence so that, basically, the human race would die off and we would no longer have to perpetuate this fallen order of things – we could all just go live in heaven. Which is fine reasoning until all the Christians realize they are dead while the rest of the Roman world, who didn’t subscribe to continence, lives on. The fallen order still lives on, just now without any light or hope at all.
Now, as ridiculous as that line of thinking is, I couldn’t help but think it briefly in class on Tuesday, not regarding virginity, of course, but in regards to the Church. We talked about some different ways to “do” church…the new emergent format, which is smaller, more organic, artsy, focused on hospitality, caring for the poor, and the kingdom of God, versus the Gen X model which develops within an existing boomer church and doesn’t really change the message – just the cultural presentation (more lights, candles, different music, etc.)
Sometimes i think, if one model is winning a ton of people to Christ, what kind of Christ are they coming to? what kind of Christianity are we perpetuating? we’re so concerned with numbers…but what if we’re just building churches full of people who don’t really know Jesus at all?
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