Network Church

When I started out on this journey of thinking through what Christian community and mission means in my context, I found myself becoming increasingly critical of ‘traditionally structured’ church (and on many occasions, with good reason!). But one of the unexpected blessings of making more of an effort to get to know the people in my area has been discovering other Christian who are involved in a variety of different expressions of church. One of the things I’ve discovered as I’ve got to know these people is that God isn’t limited by our ecclesiology.

The thing is, I keep bumping into Christians from all sorts of ecclesial backgrounds, who are being used by God to impact their communities and who have really blessed me.

The trouble is, I’m the sort of person who wants to find the definitive answer to a problem and invest all my resources there. I then tend to dismiss everything else. The same has been true of my attitude towards church, and as a result I’ve found myself becoming quite judgemental and dismissive of people who are doing things differently.

Don’t get me wrong, I still firmly believe that we need to wrestle with issues of ecclesiology and missiology so that we can shape our churches in such a way that allows us to love God and our neighbours in the particular context we find ourselves in. It’s just that I’d forgotten how graceful God is. God isn’t waiting for us to discover his divinely approved ecclesiology and missiology; he’s just waiting for us to get stuck in as best we can.

This has impacted me in a number of different ways, but most significantly I’ve begun to see that I’ve had a very limited understanding of what it means to be part of God’s church. Over the last few months, as I’ve met, prayed and shared with Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists, people who go to Vineyard, New Frontiers, simple churches and Christians who don’t go to ‘church’ at all, I’ve discovered a much broader sense of community.

So, while I’m still committed to the idea of a local community of believers, I’m increasingly seeing myself as part of a network of believers across the area. I’m not talking about formal ecumenical gatherings, but organic, relational connections that have formed as God has criss-crossed my journey with the journeys of others in the area.

As I’ve allowed myself to be drawn into this informal network, God has used people with a variety of understandings and ways of doing things to challenge and inspire me and to keep me committed to the task of figuring out what it means to love God and to love my neighbours.

Tim