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I have been spending alot of time thinking about the church recently, and more specifically the purpose of the church.

At RPTS I was told that the purpose of the New Testament Church, was to worship. Even in seminary, I saw some flaws in this understanding. Over the last year I have become more convince that worship is not the purpose of the church. Here is why I do not see the worship as the purpose of the church, it presupposes that the culmination of Chris’t kingdom has already happened. While, I do think it is appropriate to say that we were created with the purpose of worshipping God, making this the purpose of the church does not take into account the impact of sin, and the plan of redemption. Please don’t think that I trying to remove the importance of worship in the life of the church. Read More

Carl Truemen has written an interesting article over at the Reformation21 blog. While I don’t like all the things he says in his article I think that he makes some important points about what people expect when they go to church

“I worry that a movement built on megachurches, megaconferences, and megaleaders, does the church a disservice in one very important way that is often missed amid all the pizzazz and excitement: it creates the idea that church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating and thus gives church members and ministerial candidates unrealistic expectations of the normal Christian life. In the real world, many, perhaps most, of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday; budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us. It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out.

Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done. History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”

The entire post can be found here.

This will not make me a popular person with many people, but I think that there might be some really dangers associated with using a liturgy in worship.
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As a basic introduction to the topic of Multisite churches, the simplest definition is–one church that meets in several different locations. In the Harbor model, which they call Multisite and Multi-congregational, they have 6 pastors preaching at 10 different locations scattered around San Diego.

Many people might read that summation and say: “well thats not one church, thats 10 churches” But Harbor has one board of elders, and one role of membership.
The challenge of Harbors model is that it is so different from what churches have done in the last 100 years that it doesn’t seem to make sense.

The question is what makes a church a church?

During a breakout session, Dick Kaufmann recalled that when they were organizing Harbor that they were wrestling with this city-wide model of church. Dick said that he called Ed Clowney, and asked for some advice, and Clowney’s response was that he wrote a section of his book The Church for situations like Harbor’s.
When I got home I grab my copy of the book and tried to figure out what section Dick was referring to, after flipping around for about an hour I came to the section:“Perspectives on the church: local and universal” In that section, found on page 111-112, Clowney concludes with the following remarks:

“How can one term[“church”] be used with such flexibility? Simply because it is no the geographical size or location that defines it. Even those committed to local-church definition much ask which is the local church in the New Testament. Is it the house church, or is it the city church? We do better to conclude that the church can be expressed at more than one level: in smaller or larger fellowships, even in gatherings like that in Jerusalem (Acts 15), representing the whole church, in order to deal with issues that concern all.”

Clowney’s conclusion comes from looking at several texts in the new testament including Romans 16:3-5; Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15, Philemon 1:2, and Acts 8:1.

• That “Paul mentions the house church in the same breath with the churches of the gentiles, or of Asia.”
• That “House churches are found in places where city churches are addressed (Rome Laodicea, Colosee)”
• That “the term ‘church’ may be applied not only to house and city fellowships, where the members could meet together, but also to the church in a province (Acts 9:31; 15:3)”

Do you agree with Clowney’s conclusions?

Does anyone know of any examples of this wider perspective on the church being used in the PCA outside of Harbor?

Today is Ash Wednesday which is a liturgical day celebrated by different denominations, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.

I know that historically some of the reformers argued that we should participate in other parts of the christian experience on days other than traditional liturgical days. Butzer argues in De Regno Christi, that we should not fast on Ash Wednesday, but instead have other times of fasting. In their defense, most people don’t want to look like the group that is persecuting you.

To be quite honest I can see both the benefits and dangers of participating in the liturgical calendar in general, and Ash Wednesday in particular.

Around the twittersphere lots of other church-folks have been talking about how or if they are participating in ash Wednesday.

Do you know of any Presbyterian Churches or Reformed Churches, that participate in Ash Wednesday or in the liturgical calendar more specifically?

I was reading some blogs last night and noticed that Jonathan Hays brought up some questions about the PCA.

I wanted to spend a few minutes explaining some of the reasons why I am really happy to be a part of the Presbyterian Church in America.
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The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, button-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If out churches aren’t appealing to “younger brothers” they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.