I was asked by a friend what I think the church (and here I make the distinction of congreational gathering with the lowercase 'c') should look like.
Been mulling the question and here are the some of the results:
1. locationless - not 'one church in many locations' because the Church is already that. and, to further the point, the Church should not be in the real-estate business.
to me, church looks like taco tuesday.
2. the pastor is not the ceo (and neither was Jesus) - there is no reason any one person should need to carry the weight of so many people. As well, there is nothing that should raise one part of the body above the others. The Church is Christ's vision, not the "pastor's vision" (maybe more on this later).
3. non-denominational / trans-denominational - there are a vast amount of things people have disagreed on in the past to make them "take their toys and go play somewhere else". the Church should be about getting past the insignifcant differences. there are some good things that the "mainstream" congregations do that evangelicals miss out on, and vice versa. this also means there are no more dividing lines and the Church can move en masse to help the world.
4. "church service" / "worship service" does not mean meeting once a week to pat ourselves on the back or get all emotional over a common belief. the word "service" denotes actually doing something. therefore, these two phrases should be redefined to mean "helping people in need".
5. Paul's letters should be read through the understanding of Christ's teachings, not the other way around.
well that's the start. there will be more later.
but let me leave you with one more little tidbit to chew on.
i believe that the largest detriment to the Church was when Rome made Christianity the State religion. that is the point when we began to lose our identity.
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I believe church should be a gathering of the people of God to worship Him and fellowship with one another.
by fellowship, I mean legit fellowship -- like, praying for each other about real stuff, encouraging one another about real stuff, being really there for each other. And by worship, I mean real worship of God for who He is, not just worship of a cartoon portrayal of God as a really big teddy bear who has the warm fuzzies for us.
I was once part of a real church. It was me, my then-future wife, my best friend from high school, my little sister, and one other close friend. We'd all get together online once a week (except the night before the wedding, when we all got together in person.) We'd share what was going on in our lives -- how work or school was going, but also things like our struggles with various sins (from laziness to pr0n) and lessons or ideas God had taught us recently. We'd ask questions about the nature of God, or what the Bible said, or whatever, and all of us would think about them over the week (or over the course of a couple hours or minutes, depending on the question) and come back with answers, more questions, observations, and so on. Then we'd all come before God... nobody typed a thing for 5-10 minutes, because we were all privately getting right with the Father and worshipping Him. We'd pray for each other, offer up spontaneous worship songs or poems or statements, and so on. Then we'd go out and live our lives passionately for God.
This is what real church should be.
In terms of the things you brought up...
(1) location should be wherever a group of believers meets. We don't need any central location, except for occasional gatherings of more believers in order to share with each other and encourage each other on a larger scale.
(2) we don't need a CEO or a pastor for any local gathering, though we do need people who really love God and are courageous about it. We might need a specially assembled ministry team to help distribute offerings from several of these groups to those in need (directly or via charities) and to handle coordination of large events.
(3) we should be about accepting each other despite small differences, and even large differences... and more than that, we should actively love each other. That doesn't mean we ignore the differences (in fact, I think we should discuss/argue about them as candidly as we do here) but we shouldn't mistreat each other because of them.
(4) when we get together with one another, we should act as the family of God -- loving Him, loving one another, and loving those He has called us to minister to. Sometimes we should focus more on one of those things than the others, but we should not neglect any.
(5) the whole of the Bible should be read through the understanding of the whole of the Bible. We shouldn't interpret one part, assign it specific and unchangeable meaning, and then force the rest of the text to match up with our interpretation of the first part. Instead, our interpretations of each section should change as we gain understanding of other sections that speak to the same issue. Ultimately, each part of the Bible is painting one facet of the same picture, and what we want to get at is the complete picture. After all, the same God inspired several flawed humans to write about Him from different perspectives -- some based on His words to them in prophesies, some based on His hand guiding the history of Israel, some based on direct or second-hand accounts of His coming in the person of Jesus, and some based on the Spirit moving in the early church. And that same God also lives within each of us, and sometimes speaks through us, so we in our little groups should listen carefully to one another.
This is radically different from "church" as most of us know it. A really good small group might come close, though...
I think I get what you mean about reading Paul in the light of Jesus and not vice-versa. I think it's much easier to misread Paul than Jesus anyway. Jesus was straight up.
I agree with pretty much all your points, with the concession that there's nothing inherently wrong with having a building or getting together regularly for teaching, music and fellowship, or even getting emotional about it. The problems start when those things become the ends rather than the means.
I also agree that the role of the pastor has gotten damnably distant from its scriptural description. My suggestion is that we require every pastor to be publicly whipped prior to being ordained and again every ten years or so. I think that would rid us of the career-minded ministers and leave us with only the truly called. Those are the kind of guys you wouldn't mind putting on a pedestal, but they would never let you.
I have never heard the premise of #5 suggested before. I need to think on it some more, but I sort of like the sound of it.
Finally, you are most entirely corrrect in your assessment of the effect of Rome's endorsement of X'ianity. The worst thing that can happen to the gospel is for the culture to embrace it. Once Constantine became a Christian, any politician in the Senate would have been a fool not to jump up and say "Me too!" That infusion of fake believers marked the beginning of religion in the Church. The new pope has a point when he speaks of the need for a smaller, purer church. Historically, the Church (capital C) has always been stronger when it's persecuted.
By the way, the Catholic Church instituted the celibacy requirement upon priests in order to break the practice of priests' passing their churches like an inheritance to their children. Of course, that could never happen in Protestant Christianity.
*cough cough*Osteen*cough*
"I think it's much easier to misread Paul than Jesus anyway. Jesus was straight up."
People also have the tendency to make what Paul said into some new form of law, basically trading a Mosaic law for a Pauline one. Paul was writing specific letters to specific (early) churches. He had no way of knowing his letters were going to be turned into scripture.
Taco Tuesday was amazing... and it is a start. It's a part of the whole, but it was a huge stepping stone for me to see the "church" in the eyes of the 5 other guys gathered around that table, "breaking bread" (or chips and salsa) together in fellowship...
There was no agenda, no announcements, no leaders... no official discussion of things to come. We were gathered together there because we wanted to be there. We found each other. It was dynamic and organic. Again, it was the "be all, end all" but I see it as a part of the whole in my spiritual journey.
And praying together... not in a "everybody bow your heads" kind of way. But in a more authentic way of agreeing with one another, sharing one another's burdens, encouraging and challenging one another. Oh and laughing together... a lot! We were all so different then the other, but brought together in some strange unexpected way. And in the end, we didn't need to close our eyes and holds hands and pray... we had been praying as we each recognized God was in our midst as we shared.
Oops.. I meant to say that "it WASN'T the be-all and end-all"....
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