I don't think "church" is big enough

Church isn't big enough.  It really can't fit into the space we've made for it. I don't mean a church building, I mean our current, cultural idea of church as a collection of people who meet a time or two each week to go over the basics and pay the bills.  That's not big enough.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

These words from Paul, the apostle, in Ephesians are just one place in the New Testament that say there's something much larger going on than the ability your created social network has to encapsulate and manifest - much larger than your imagination.

God wasn't just updating the synagogue or temple worship in Jesus, he was wrapping all that Old Law stuff up and moving on to a movement; a new way of being where he left the big religious temple and entered into us, his new temple.

All are invited to the new way of being, not just the religious and/or those who like to get together to have "a worship service" once or twice a week.  Sure, a lot of the early believers got together a lot, but in ways that reflected their culture and time, not necessarily in ways that were meant for everyone for all time.

We don't even do what they did anyway, even though we'd like to say that we base current practice on their ancient practice - we just don't. We are usually more consumed with their "how they did church" than we are with their why - it's about what God did through Jesus, not what we are doing.

In Jesus, God was destroying a dividing wall of hostility between himself and others AND, pretty importantly, between the religious groups that existed then - the Jewish people and the other nations.  That is the wall he tore down in Jesus - so that all could be his, not just a few that "go to church together".

When we try to recreate the temple by cramming everyone back into a building and saying "it's God's house", I get it, but that is missing the point 100% and it really trying to completely undo what God was doing in tearing the temple curtain apart and sending the Spirit.

We sometimes act like there's a clean up needed on aisle 4 - like God somehow accidentally spilled out and we need to help him get back into his place in a building.  No, he poured himself out on purpose, on people, not into a building - into life, not just into a religion.

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When we think that way, we often end up being bouncers at the door, deciding who can and cannot be inside and it's usually based on what we like or don't like, who we approve or don't approve, etc.  And it got "purer" or more specific with each passing generation as to who was allowed in.

That fact that in Ephesus you had a woman who was freely associating with "the church" there that Paul had to speak about because she was spreading the good news of the local Greek/Roman goddess among the believers shows, at least to some degree, they were a little more different in structure than we imagine.

It only takes a short read through Ephesians to understand all those things Paul was instructing them to stop doing was because they were actively doing all those things among them and he wanted to be focused on the new way and not simply being people who just wasted the new thing God had given them.

Their gathering was to remind them of the good things they now had in God so they'd keep living life and sharing the good things from God with other people who didn't yet know the good things from God.  They took care of each other so that no one would give up on God and turn back to hopelessness.

It was a movement and was even called "The Way" for a long time and wasn't called "church" in the way we use the word until about 300 years later when a pagan king decided he wanted to "bless" the church and essentially began the process of upending the movement and turning it into another formal religion.

I don't think it means all churches everywhere are jacked up and completely wrong.  I do believe that God works in and through those groups, just like he works in and among people who trust and depend on him who aren't a part of any of those groups.  It's God's Spirit that works among us and it goes where it wants.

The subtle shift in how we see things can open our eyes to see God at work in places and in ways that I don't think we can imagine when we allow traditional or current "church" ideas or programming to shape how we see, hear, and follow God.

The immense freedom that comes with that shift is really hard to explain.  There's an initial fear that you're leaving behind the boat and doomed to drown - then there's the realization you weren't even in a boat or on the water - you'd been hoodwinked into thinking that you and yours were in some kind of "ark of safety".

You'd been fooled into thinking that group you were part of is or was THE ark of safety instead of God himself.  It might seem hard to imagine if you're not from that background, but you 100% can think that leaving "the church" means you're also leaving God and that "returning to God" means "going to church".

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I know I'm glossing over a lot of things and oversimplifying a lot of things - but in another way, I think maybe it needs an even larger correction on occasion, because the institutional mindset that church is wrapped around today goes so deep that it sometimes can't see that it has made itself the gospel, not God.

I'm not insulting the bride of Christ - the "church" of today does that enough on its own.  No, Jesus is the one prepping "the bride of Christ", not us.  We're the ones that often tell Jesus how to dress her and what she should and shouldn't be doing, as if we know best.

Each generation has to come to grips with its understanding of God/the good news. That "coming to grips" means individuals have to come to grips with that, not just leaders deciding on behalf of all the people under their leadership - that kind of thing rarely happens because it's too costly for their vision.

The new wine of the Spirit is poured into new wineskins because it can't be contained in previously used containers that will fight the process of the new wine becoming fine wine.  You can stretch the old containers so much before they have to break or expel the wine they hold for the sake of their integrity.

I'm still looking around at what those new containers or new wineskins look like in our time when new challenges and new opportunities are unfolding.  And I'm praying for eyes to see what I don't see yet and the patience to know that his timing and process are more important than my excitement and urgency.

And I'm not worried about it anymore, though my old self will often slip back into the "It's my responsibility" thinking I picked up from people over the years.  I know God is not unaware of what's going on and that he will work with what he's got and with who will listen.

We'll be fine.

Grace and peace.

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