What If?

What if, in stead of a blueprint for every facet of the church, the Bible was a book of Holy principles? What if what we read about the church and its actions was simply a group of Christians living out those principles as they applied to their world? What if God expects us to live and look like Christians of the 21st Century instead of Christians of the 1st Century? Here are three quotes I just picked up from another blog. This is my next book purchase. Read them and let them sink in – this is food for thought! "We can no longer afford our historical sentimentality, even addiction, to the past. Christendom is not the biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely one way in which the church has conceived of itself. In enshrining it as the sole form of the church, we have made it into an idol that has captivated our imaginations and enslaved us to a historical-cultural expression of the church. We have not answered the challenges of our time precisely because we refuse to let go of the idol. This must change! ….It will require that we adopt something that looks far more like the early church in terms of its conception of the church (ecclesiology) and its core task in the world (missiology)." - page 15 "How much of the traditional church's energy go into adjusting their programs and their public meetings to cater to an unseen constituency? If we get our seating, our parking, our children's program, our preaching, and our music right, they will come. ….The missional church recognizes that it does not hold a place of honor in its host community and that its missional imperative compels it to move out from itself into that host community as salt and light." - page 19 "All the tinkering with the existing model of church that's going on will not save the day. Simply making minor adjustments like replacing pews with more comfortable seating, or singing contemporary pop songs instead of hymns will not reverse the fundamental decline in the fortunes of the Western church… Or think of the church as a VCR. If you have newer DVDs, you can't play them on your old VCR - you need an entirely different device." - pg 35 “The Shaping of Things to Come “ by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. Do you think that this just might be one the reasons that no group since the first century has preached the Gospel to their world?