Being the 21st Century Church
Why do some churches look at the first century Church as an example? Should we? Was the first century Church perfect? How did they treat each other? Outsiders? What sins did the churches of the first century struggle with? Should we try to pattern our churches after the first century Church or should we try to be the Church of the twenty first century? What happens or could happen when we try to pattern modern churches after the Church of the first century? Was the second century Church trying to be the church of their time, meeting people where they were at? Can we lose relevancy if we strive to pattern churches today after the Church of the first century? Shouldn't we be the be the 21st century Church? Is being relevant unscriptural?
posted by preacherman @ 8:00:00 PM
7 Comments:
Not sure we should pattern anything but the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus... and Jesus is timeless and applicable to all people in all places.
I don't know about the answers, but am glad that we are asking the questions. The real danger, I think, is when we think we know what "church" is supposed to be and we quit looking at it. I think that's what has happened for a very long time.
Now, I see a lot of people who question church as an institution and want to make it more relevant. I think it will be more relevant when more Christians are truly living a "kingdom of God" existence. When we start to question ourselves instead of the walls around us.
We should never try to make Jesus relevant to others; rather we should ask others to make themselves relevant to Jesus. That doesn't mean we ought to shun technology, media, and pop music, but it does mean that if there are things in these arenas that would offend God, we should have no part of them.
Honestly we aren't so different then the first century church in this. Most of the letters written by the apostles were written to say, "your doing good in these areas, and not so good in these areas (usually holdovers from their culture that were offensive to God like pride, lust, greed, etc.) I don't imagine a letter from Paul, Peter, or John would look much different if they wrote it to the 21st century church.
Manifest Blog
I think we should not idolize the first century church but be the church of today.
The first century church should not be worshipped. They werent perfect we need to be Gods church now not looking to the past.
There is nothing really keeping us from having that kind of 1st century community. We just have to re-imagine it for our time and place.
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