There is enough distancing and disintegration in our lives. The weekdays from the weekend. The friends from the co-workers. The inner from the outer life. Not that boundaries aren't important, but what is it that holds a life together?
If church is the vessel through which people meet God, grasp the gospel, find fellowship, team up together, what are we saying when we say, "I go to church"? Is there a point where you don't? I mean, in its essence? What has happened, I believe and lament, is that our churches have become too disconnected from our neighborhoods and our communities. My fellow pastor-friend Ben Park said something to the effect, "we must guard against our churches becoming country clubs." Church is not a country club. It is neither a kind of separatist country that secludes itself until the End, nor is it a club used to beat moral sense into society. My church shall not be an escape pod from planet Earth.
Nor shall I countenance a church that sanctimoniously sanctions the status quo. (Ooh. A church in tension: intention?)
But I will be a part of a church that serves, lives, and dies for the people around it, the locals, the natives. I will be a part of a church that has real good news, and it will be right under our noses.
When there is no vision, the people perish. But when there is a vision, the people parish.
"I'm no Wendell Berry or Alice Waters, but I sometimes wish I could be the Korean American male version of some hybrid of both. I think it is time that we stop seeing the church as a place to go and more of a mode of being. In short, I want a real local church."
ReplyDeletethis sentiment deserves bolding, underlining, exclamation points, wide distribution, etc.