Genesis 3:1-10
I find myself seeking to know more. It's one of my habits I guess. Sometimes its a great thing and sometimes it causes more problems than it solves. It's a desire to know and be informed and a belief that by knowing more I can make better decisions, know people better, be a better person, be a better Christian. I want to know more about myself, about people in general, about God, about life, and more recently why people are walking away from and sometimes running away from the church. Or if they aren't running why they won't truly buy-in to the Church.
But that right there is the real problem I think...we talk about the church as if it is a thing. We speak of the church as a destination, as a building, as a place, as a club that we are members of. But the truth is that church is actually none of those things. The church is a living breathing organism. The church was intended to be a very fluid, portable, adaptable gathering. This multifaceted question that keeps coming back to me lately is, "What if knowledge isn't what matters? What if 'doing' church wasn't even a part of God's great plan? What if 'Church' wasn't meant to be a thing we 'do', rather an 'existence' we become a part of? What would that look like?"
That kind of community would be all about RELATIONSHIPS. It would be about doing life together. It wouldn't be about rules; "don't do this and don't do that". It would be about loving one another with no limits or reasons except only that Jesus loved us first and he calls us to "Remain in His love"; to exist within that love so that it becomes a part of all that we think, speak, and do. A community that takes that seriously won't need the rules, they will simply need more people to love because they have so much overflowing love that their current numbers aren't enough.