CHURCH AS RELATIONAL ACTION

What if we would be church the following way:

• covenant with Him and celebrate life
• share our lives and celebrate each other
• open our eyes and together contradict evil around us?

Actionwise this could mean to

• teach each other how to live a good life with eternal perspectives (lecture, dialogue, workshop, training etc.)
• explore and celebrate each other (peer groups with story telling, listening & feedback, prophecy & intercession, fun & feasting...)
• meet each other's needs by sharing resources (ideas, time, money, equipment, space, contacts, know-how...)
• actively seek-out and solidarize with those in need (latch-key kids, lonely elderly, single parents, unemployed, your normal neighbor, anyone coming your way...) and find ways to do good (and no, i am not talking "servant-evangelism"!)
• understand and counteract destructive cultural  patterns around us and find ways to contradict evil in the public space (of media, professions, politics, curricula, the web, the street...)
• and to use the time freed up by less religious activities to do these things together!

Structurally this could mean to think about

• networks of and meetings with friends
• global/ local clusters of friendship networks 
• an extensive online social network environment
• specialists and interspecialists connections
• engaging the culture task forces
• specific outreach/ project/  neighborhood groups
• training workshops/ lectures
• area resource centers [term borrowed] etc.

I cannot imagine this is easily done. To start with a minimum budget of time i suggest we stop our overdose of religious activities (like singing and praying, reading and talking, and talking and reading and singing and praying...) and start Loving God, Each Other, Our Neighbor and This World together with Him.

Just for a change.

Comments

[Simon Mason]

Hi Andi, this blog deserves some comment... well put my friend... nice to see our get together in the YHA is still resonating... be encouraged all of this is happening... but you are right people need to start repenting of dead works to enter into the Kingdom...

So it all begins with the preaching of the message of the Kingdom after all... as I said in my last email we are obsessed with church this and church that... Paul's statement in Corinthians, "your meetings do more harm than good" should be mandatory over every door and see how many people don't already agree they just don't know what the alternative is!!!

Now how about my micro daily prayer networks to kick this into gear... it will only happen from the foundations up!!! Love Simon