NOTE: As I was writing this post, I surfed around a bit and found that, oh! joy! Messy Christian is back! And, she just post about Church too! Now, this is what you call colla-blog-aration at its best!

Of late, my church pastors have been talking a lot about this concept of Church Without Walls“>Church Without Walls or the Underground Church. He was referring to the practice of taking our faith beyond the four walls of the Church building and outside the structures of the traditional idea of “doing church.”

Too many times, when we think of being a Christian, or being part of a Church, we think in terms of the organization or a group that has a particular structure or organizational framework.

Yet, when we think of the disciples of Jesus in the first century, they really got it when they went to out to engage people in the synagogues, the temple and in other public meeting places, even to other sacred or religious sites. They went back to each other homes for fellowship, prayer and more study and learning.

So, what does this mean to us modern day Christians then? What does Church Without Walls mean to you and me?

Last night I witnessed a Church Without Walls. I went down to L.A. Skid Row where a group of Christians meet every Friday night and read and preach from God’s Word at the Corner of Wall and Winston right in the heart of Skid Row. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 31% [?]

It’s time to talk, says Dr. Bob Cornwall, Pastor of the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Lompoc, and columnist of the Lompoc Record. This well articulated post, in the SOMA blog is a rewrite of an equally well-thought out reflective op-ed piece on the Lompoc Record.

I resonate with Dr Cornwall’s call to talk - for those of us who call ourselves evangelicals - to no longer hide behind our discomfort of those who are different from us. There is so much we can talk about. For instance, I often wonder why is it that we find it so hard to forgive sexual sin.

Why is it that respectable leaders can be hot-tempered, or haughty, or even arrogant, and yet they can continue to capture society’s respect and hold positions of leadership and power even in the church. Yet, if someone is entangled in sexual impropriety, we have a completely different view of such people?

Why the double standard?

For instance, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 20% [?]

Most Christians relate Pentecost to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. Often Pentecost is associated to spiritual gifts, spirituality, faith, inner and intra-personal development, personal holiness and the theological controversies about the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. Or about the “t” word.

In this post, I would like to take another look at Pentecost from the perspective of a couple of my recent posts, which tied the Day of Pentecost with Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree and clearing of the Temple of the moneychangers and traders.

That God chose the Day of Pentecost to pour out His Spirit upon His church and that He did it in the manner as recorded in Acts 2 is significant. The celebration of the Feast of Pentecost drew many travelers from all over to Jerusalem, just as the Feast of the Passover had done when Jesus cleared the Temple of the moneychangers and traders.

The Feast of Pentecost was one of the central Feasts of Old Testament religion - that of the celebration of the giving of the Mosaic Law on Mount Sinai. Many Jews, both Diaspora Jews as well as foreigners who were converted to Judaism would make that pilgrimage to attend the festivities in Jerusalem. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: Pentecost

Churchgoing is probably a common practice for many in Western societies, although apparently this is becoming less popular these days, even among committed followers of Christ. Recently, I read about someone who professes to be atheist yet admits to guilt feelings for sleeping in on Sundays and skipping church. He attributed this to the way he was brought up. As a young person, I remember that missing church services used to be a point of much consternation for some of us. One gimmick some of my friends and I used when we missed Sunday services to assuage the guilt feelings for having missed church was to casually say to a friend when we see them the following week, “Oh, I didn’t see you in church last Sunday!” as a way to distract from the fact that we were the ones who had missed church instead of the other party! What you might call a pre-emptive ambush of sorts!

In any case, for those of us who call ourselves Christians and have been going to church “all our lives” why do we do it? Do we go to church because we want to go, Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: Churchgoing

It has been almost two weeks (has it really?) since I posted on Jesus’ clearing out of the temple. I highlighted that the gospel’s story juxtaposed the clearing of the temple with the cursing of the fig tree in a significant way. I drew those two events together as symbolic of Jesus’ abolition of the Old Covenant and establishment of the New. In this post, I will further explain how this event can be seen in context to the flow of the biblical accounts.

As I pointed out earlier, Jesus was incensed at what was happening at the Temple. The main issue with the moneychangers and other traders was not so much a matter of doing business in a house of worship (as some have contended as a mixing of the sacred with the secular) but that what they were doing was their institutionalized oppression of foreigners and the disenfranchised.

Remember that I pointed out earlier that Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Technorati Tags: fig tree, Old Covenant, Temple, moneychangers, oppression, foreigners, disenfranchised

There they go again! Over at Christianity Today’s blog there is another little storm brewing! This time it is an altercation about the cover of the recent issue of Leadership which features the a statue depicting in clear view some fine “marble bosom”. Rather than discuss the import of what the issue was dedicated to, it appears that readers are more concerned with the supposed propriety of depicting a statue with bare breasts on the cover page of a magazine dedicated to ministers and ministry. (Incidentally, Messy Christian is also wondering why there is such a fuss over part of the female anatomy).

First, there was the guy who complained that he could no longer leave a copy of the magazine on the coffee table for fear that one of his 8 sons might see some (er, very cold) skin. Then there was the woman who found the need to strategically paint over the images before (gasp!) her husband got a hold of the semi-pornography (actually, it might be pornographic after all, by some definition!). Finally, there was the guy who found the photo of a bare-chested man and a woman wearing “a shirt that seemingly could fall off at any moment” within the pages of the magazine a little too pernicious. And, “[a]s if that weren’t enough, neither of them is wearing a wedding band and the article is about sex”. What horror of horrors!

So, the debate continues… Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Sometimes reading blogs of a particular kind gets me really down. Sometimes they plain send me into a bout of depression. Mostly, it just kills off all creative juices and I fail to write anything, and need to take a break - from reading blogs and often, from blogging altogether.

Recently, I stumbled on this little bit of blogosphere buzz over at Out of Ur blog recently, and got all entrenched in reading the tete-a-tete between Brian MacLaren and Mark Driscoll about homosexuality.

Reading the comments was quite disturbing, for it seems that many who commented haven’t really read what was said in the original post that started all the talk. It was like a nasty uncontrollable whirlpool that dragged everyone down the spiral of fear, conjecture and even arrogance. But, every now and then, there were some sane voices. Among them I found this comment by “Cyrano” that I think ought to be highlighted (there are others as well, of course, especially a few that were posted today): Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

Technorati Tags: Brian MacLaren, Mark Driscoll, homosexuality

Megachurch bashers are at it again. This time around it has to do with Christmas services. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but apparently the news that many of the larger churches around the country have decided not to hold any services Christmas morning because Christmas this year falls on a Sunday have caught the attention, and in many cases, the ire of many a news reporter, op-ed editor, community leader, and of course, your friendly neighborhood blogger.

I first caught on to this story through DJ Chuang’s post, which include two lists: those churches that will not be holding Sunday services on Christmas morning, and those that will be having services. Rev Ed has a more balanced post about the issue, and he also points to the post at Church Marketing Sucks that provides a bit of a round-up of other blogposts on this storm in the Eggnog mug.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14% [?]