for those in a hurry this is a long one!

Kathy wrote
>In the church, the stakes are life and death and dealing with
>sin.  I was shocked at Keith's admonition that his non-Christian
>acquaintances are church, just without Christ.

I would like to clarify what I was saying here. Being church involves both
horizontal
and vertical relationships. That is relationships between each other and
between us and God.
What I was saying is that I found my local non-Christian restaurant team to
be far more effective than any church that I have been in on the horizontal
aspects of "church", such as fellowship in supporting each other, in
actually being genuinely involved in each
others lives, and in being accepting of each other without being judgemental

I have been very active in many churches, including some reputed to be some
of the most progressive, non-religious and relationship orientated in
Britain. I do not blame these churches for being inadequate but I am simply
pointing out a factual situation. The fact is that true deep relationships
take real situations and real time to cement and church structures and
meetings don't provide that. Actually interpersonal time is very often a
side issue to the worship and preaching. In my local Anglican church I
eventually decided that I might as well not arrive until the coffee
afterwards, since for me that is where real church starts, where people
discuss their lives. The irony of this was that the best conversation that I
would have in the coffee time was with an atheist that had been dragged to
church by his wife for 10 years.

If I compare my institutional church relationships to my relationships with
my other Christian friends, there is a big difference. My university friends
were mainly Christians and we did all the Christian things together but this
is not what made the relationships deep and worthwhile. If I look back on
those friendships that lasted and were real, I can see one common factor in
them all. These are the guys and gals that I went on a sailing trip with. It
was Scotland, force 9 gales in the winter, and quite an experience! My blind
friend rob had a great time by the way. The stories of this and other trips
were told and retold for years. Just about all of the weddings and stag dos
I went to for the next 7 years involved the same group that had been on that
and other similar trips. I think of one guy whom I did not actually
fellowship with much at university or church, but that week of sailing did a
lot to establish a ten year friendship. This was subsequently cemented in
the following situations. I rented a house from him, we filled it with
homeless guys, including an ex-biker, ex-terrorist and a number of other
non-ex-gamblers, one of whom offered to do decorating for my friend which he
did, he then managed to steal several thousand pounds and did a runner. I
put to you that it is in real life where real relationships are forged.

I think that this email e-church list works when it is a window onto our
real lives, rather than our "church" lives. I don't know if others agree
with me on that one.

My local restaurant team, that I was using as an example, work together
through thick and thin for some 50 hours a week and they are a particularly
close knit and professional crew. The head chef just won best head chef
in the chain of restaurants. It is the cleanest and best run in the country
and everyone works well together, but more than that everyone socialises
together too and even better they are not cliquey or exclusive. Any church
could learn a thing or two
from this restaurant - that's what I was saying.

Yes indeed they are in a sense a church, but lacking Christ. If I get a
chance to lead any of them to have a personal relationship with the Lord I
would not advise them to go to a denominational church but I would aim to
"redeem the community". So the aim is to bring Christ to
the community. Because as we correctly identified, this community lacks
Christ, and indeed Christ is the point of being church.

For a model of this I note that Jesus sent the disciples out
to peoples homes to minister to them in their communities. One day a
particularly large pile of washing up arrived and I muttered under my breath
something about going to work at the small cafe down the road. One of the
chefs quipped, "don't Go, we wont have anyone to tell us how to find God if
you go". It may have been a joke, but again I find it highly ironic that I
have had more God chats in this little community than in many churches that
I have been to. At the Christmas party I was sincerely invited to talk about
my faith to 4 different groups in one night which is astounding. And as
usual at that party as I am inclined to do I came across a young lady who
was in need of ministry for the abuse that she had suffered in her
childhood.

> Keith,
> There seems to be a lot of finger pointing and judgmentalism in this
> post.  I submit to you that what you are looking for can be found in many
> local churches,

ok, hmm, I apologise if my hurts come across too much. It is true that I
have been hurt several times in several church contexts.

Nevertheless my conclusions, some of which I presented here I did come to
unwillingly. I didn't want to discover that churches are out of the Lords
favour. I was often attending 2 of them at the time. In recent months I
have had the Lord speaking to me and through other prophetic figures and it
does appear that the Lord is building his church and this new wineskin is
genuinely different to the denominational building meeting preaching singing
style thing.

Before I was very much of this opinion - "well its not perfect, it never
will be but
let us not throw out the baby with the bath water", as Vicky suggested. But
the more I
hear from the Lord on what he thinks of these churches the more I realise
that God is saying to those that are ready to hear him "Judge a tree by its
true fruit,
if am not there, then truly I am not there, leave and come to me yourself".

I spent 5 years in an Anglican Church house group, plugging away at
bible studies week in week out. It took me 4 years to even have an
opportunity to talk about the holy spirit. The truth is that God is not
pleased with Churches that do not allow him to be involved, and the very act
of placing the same people up the front preaching for an hour and "leading"
every week is coming against things like "the priesthood of all believers".
I also said that my local mega church is displeasing God, through abusing
their people, and relying on human front men all the time. In this case I
was not being judgemental I was relating a truth that Jesus had revealed to
me.

The more I am pulled out of my comfort pew the more I get the idea that the
Lord himself wants to throw the baby out with the bath water, because
instead of growing to maturity and stepping out of the bath, the baby has
been in the bath too long and has drunk too much of the water and has got
sick. I get the distinct impression that he is not happy with being
"organised out" of what should be his church, and that the baby needs to get
out  more into the world. There having engaged with the real world and the
pain out there it will cry to its father for deliverance.

> Also, you strike me as a
> person who may not enjoy organized anything and that attitude may, I said
> "May", be coloring your thinking!

Yes I agree it may be colouring my thinking, (note the correct spelling my
dear American friends ;-)

Again, lets look at the family as a good example. There is a difference
between a weekly lecture on child rearing and changing a babies nappy
(translated into american that would be a diaper). A family is not organised
with formal meetings or even hierarchy. The true leader is one who functions
in the role of a servant to all, usually the mother. When Mary becomes
gifted in music, it is mum or dad that fulfils the best leadership role by
simply paying for the music lessons and driving their sibling to the lesson,
waiting patiently outside in the car until the lesson is over.

In my role of being church, I am the mother, I do the cooking the cleaning,
and at the moment I am doing the decorating, but I am not the music teacher.
That is Jesus' role, he is God, I simply introduce him and help those in my
care to learn their lessons in life from Jesus himself while I watch and
wonder at the works he has done and is doing everyday.

many thanks for reading this far - perhaps I should write a novel like Phil
eh.

your friend in Christ

Keith