CHURCH VERSION 1.7

Hearing a lot about the latest cries, trends, practices and "successes" in church planting here in Sheffield, UK. To be honest, I feel quite ambivalent about it all. It's so much good things being achieved by so great people with godly passion and lovely servant's hearts and it's all good reasons for being thankful that church planting dynamics are really increasing significantly here in Britain and elsewhere, and yet... 
... and yet - I am bored.
Not that I am not challenged and enriched on a peronal level through all this(!), but yet - it's still all "doing church". Doing more church. Doing church better. Doing more bettter. Doing better more. Doing, doing, doing. And it's all "church 1", probably meanwhile it's "church version 1.7", but I keep desiring to see "church version 2.0"!
There is some clear hints here to the fact that "NEW things ARE in fact under way" (Alexander's simple-church research), but it is generally acknowledged that we do not know yet what the shape of the church will look like nor do we actually seem to even have understood it's "DNA".
What keeps frustrating me is that we keep getting ourselves busy with the good things instead of hitting the breaks, stop "doing", start looking around us in utter helplessness, start crying out to the ONE and then re-align thoughts and actions according to his guidance.

Everything (!!!) else seems like an aweful waste of time, energy and resources to me.

Maybe I am wrong.

Comments

[Scott]

i share your pain my friend. i also am completely worn out by the business of church as well.

the best advice i may have ever had on this is from Mike Steele: start at home. build a community of godliness around our own families (created or manufactured). pray. wait. act. think globally... act locally... no, act personally.

the rest of what i've seen "out there" are simply "gimmicks". adding a guitar or video to a worship service doesn't change anything. if it does, then that's a good indication that your foundations are completely wrong to begin with.

[andiwolf]

thanks carl for the repeated invitation - beware, might come true one day ;) and thanks guido - I absolutely agree with every word of your comment! that's why it's more about DNA than shape i'd say and my main question in the moment is much more fundamental: what actually is "the message"???!!

[carl]

hi my brother andi, just want to say i hear and share your frustration about the 'doing' mentality.

Maybe it's cos that mindset is so much better marketed, or rather, much more visible, that us brits who are keen 'to be' aren't so well known? Ieven as I write these words i regret them though...it's almost as if i've drawn a line between 'us and them', created another division. That would never be my intention...i'm just saying that there are english guys who are content to live out their apostolic calling without the restraints of programme/image driven agendas!

PS-don't forget that there'll always be aplace for you if you ever come to Birmingham or the Black Country in England again!

[guido]

You are so right! Stop doing the church. Start being the church!

And it will not be "church version 2.0" it will be "church version J.X.". You asked: "what the shape of the church will look like". The shape will be different here in my village ... and it will be different 20 km from here.

The ONE knows how it looks like! Being the church, walking alongside Jesus and doing what he tells me to do, that is all I want! ... and we will taste, how the shape looks like. That is enough for me. Jesus already knows, how it looks like.

Trust him!

cu, guido

ps: and if the time comes and we think: "This is it! This is the emerging church! This is the shape! We found it!" ... then we already started to make a model out of the fresh life which Jesus has given ... and the life will fade away because the focus will be the church instead of Jesus hinself ... and we will start to look out for another emerging church.

I hope I expressed my thoughts, so you can understand my heart ... originally thinking in german ;-)