SPIRITUAL intimacy....

I thought I should point out that the last couple posts have been about SPIRITUAL intimacy. It's pretty obvious from the context that I meant intimacy within the church and among friends. But after reading them over a little, I felt that with a little misunderstanding they could be taken as I-need-a-girlfriend notices. Although I am taking applications....

JUST KIDDING!!!!!!

Anyway, I was talking with my friend Dan last sunday (Yeah okay, there was a year-long streak of unoriginality in the 80's where everyone named their kid Dan or Steve. Sociologists call them Generation D and Generation S respectively). We are both nuts (Both nuts for Jesus and garden-variety nuts. He's one of my best friends on the planet because ultimately he has to be. Do you realize how hard it is to find friends as crazy as me? Girlfriends are even worse!).

ANYWAY, We get to talking about the church. He's questioning a lot of his paradigm concerning church. We both grew up in this organizational structure where we sit in a pew, hear a sermon and some music and then leave. Church was a passive activity with the pastor in charge, being the prophet, teacher, apostle, evangelist, elder, and deacon all in one. Responsiblity was delagated to the laypeople for most jobs but the hearing from God part, that was the pastor's job. He then told us what God wanted.

What we were, I guess, verbally longing for is a more organic model of church. Finding one that isn't crusty with the weight of insitution is a hard task. Instead of the church getting together as a group and being a Jesus-based rotary club, maybe it consists of a group of Christians living together and growing together. If elders in the faith rise up, the church doesn't elect them but recognizes their elderness for the rest of the body. Independent of that recognition, they are still elders. The same goes for prophets, teachers, and the like. Maybe all the names church leaders give stuff aren't really things we need to implement but appelations to what God is already doing.

Like for instance, the old way of thinking would say we need more prophets in the church. So the pastor would teach about prophets, train about prophets, and generally have a "prophecy drive". Then by his attempts to raise up different people to be prophets, he would hope God would call some of them to actually speak with inspiration.

Instead, the new way of thinking would have God raise people up. When the community got together in prayer, breaking bread, and intimacy times, someone would say something with inspiration from God to edify the community. Then people would recognize this person spoke with inspiration from God (oftentimes on a regular basis), thus he is a prophet. God would raise up the people and their gifts, not man and not through the method of striving against the wind we have been practicing. Real chuch is recognizing what God is already doing.

I have more to say but not enough time in which to say it. I might get back on and talk some more about this subject, especially about how saying this, I don't want to become the thing I hate- institutionalized.

Daniel