Why Can't Christian's Hang Out?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Hartson on February 9, 2012 at 10:43am

To continue. If we meet with people and fellowship with them, is this not "church".  If we pray, and talk, share our lives, eat, laugh, cry, and support; is that not "church".  If in my life I know well only 4 other people who I share my life with, and they likewise do the same, is that not better than to spend my life in an institution going through the process of church and end up with no significant relationships?  I know a lonely elderly woman in a nursing home. She refuses to fellowship, converse or otherwise involve her life in those at the nursing home. Her reasoning is that she does not agree with them doctrinal, and therefore have little in common.  I do the same.  I cut myself off from people because I am looking for "like minded" people.  We look for people to do church with who predominantly agree with our Organic Church idea.  If you are of the Organic Church mindset and are alone, I wonder if you are truly alone. Perhaps your experience, and mine, have just a different flavor.  Jesus met with and fellowshiped with people who did not agree with him.  His own disciples did'nt "get it" most of the time. So, when did he do church?  My goodness, I don't even agree all the time with my wife or children.  Perhaps we ought to do what we can do, and not be concerned about what we "should" be doing, or what we want to do.  One of biggest hurdles to maturing in Christ is realizing, this is it; and being ok with it.  Perhaps if we invite into our homes people to fellowship with, dine with, pray with, and give, share and love them.  Is this not church?  When I go fishing with a Christian brother, and we talk about his rebellious teen daughter.  I listen to him, I pray with him, I let him know, although I don't have the answers, he is not alone.  Was this not fellowship?  Did church happen?  How many services did I sit through in church participating in process, only to spend a few moments trying to talk with or share my life with the other saints.  Never to have enough time to even know who they were.  Which is of more value; sitting in a church for an hour and half spending 15 minuets chit chatting with someone, or eating a meal with them after church getting to know them?  Which one was the church activity?   Sometimes I wonder if we are like Dorothy in the "Wizard Of Oz"  we had the power all the time, but we must discover it for ourselves.  What we look for, in a church we actually possess all the time.  God is not a time waster, he waste nothing.  I am where I am and you are where you are, you are where God wants you.  My prayer is that he opens my eyes to actually see what being a church really means.  Is it about the format, meetings, and organization, or is it about sharing our lives with people, weather they align with our thinking or not.  

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Permalink Reply by Jim London on February 9, 2012 at 11:28am

Michael, you are sharing and asking about something that is very crucial. Often the pattern is "We don't want to be that programmed meeting all designed and led by the fellow hired to make it all run smoothly. We want to be more personal and relational". But then we keep trying to make it look similar, but in a different setting, like a house. 

I like your language of "just hanging out." My wife and I and a few friends live like that. But it turns out to be intentional at the same time. Our focus includes deliberately attempting to build one another up into Christ. The one anothers on the New Testament are so crucial. If we don't let Christ in us be expressed freely, then our lives together can be of no different character than the social lives of folks who don't know Him. So it's free-flowing in the sense of not being programmed/ planned out -- but it's intentional. Make sense?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Hartson on February 9, 2012 at 11:35am

Sure, it's intentional.  God is responsible for the Results, we are responsible for the action.  God asks us to share our lives, talk to others about him, love others.  Who gets saved, or what a person does or does not do or what becomes of our actions is according to God's purpose.  I used to belong to a church that would actually take a tally account of people who you "led to the Lord", like a sales quota.  Something kind of wrong with that notion.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Hartson on February 10, 2012 at 1:05pm

I know I'm responding to myself, but I had idea. I like stories; sometimes they teach us about ourselves.  A couple of weeks ago I needed some engine work done on an old Chevy.  Tired of paying a mechanic my friend talked me into working on it ourselves.  He said "He knew what to do".   With both of us leaning over the engine, parts around us he later confessed that he "kinda of knew what he was doing".  Well, a couple of you tube videos, some laughs we muddle through, and fixed the problem.  My wife said we were lucky, we felt kind of confident. In some ways that's the way God is and the church.  We like to have things safe, secure, assured from a lack of danger or problems.  So, we employ experts, create institutions, programs, put in a nice neat package so as not to worry about it.  We trust our insurance plans, the jobs, the 401k, and the church.  But life and God are not quite like that.  We find it difficult to trust God, let him be in control; because when he's in control we tend not to be, and that is scary for us. We don't like diving into places and things that are unfamiliar, unknown, and where we are not in control. Its like what the Beavers said of Aslan when asked if he was "Safe".  Of course he's not safe, but He's good.

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Permalink Reply by Jim London on February 10, 2012 at 1:33pm

Great story, Michael -- and a good analogy. Two options: contriving a sense of safety/ control or trusting the God who reveals. One is an illusion; the other is life.

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Permalink Reply by Darrell Meeks on February 13, 2012 at 4:56pm

Michael, my experiences with such groups for more than 20 years now is pretty much the same. Some of them broke up over childish things, such as fleshly disputes, others because they wanted that "religious fix" like spiritual junkies always desire without understanding why.

 

Getting religiosity out of others is something you'll never accomplish. Not even God can do that. Each individual must be willing to relinquish religiosity as a personal choice from the outset.

 

It's kind of the like the natural tendency to see love for a spouse as an emotional element rather than a rational one. Hollywood reinforces, on an almost daily basis, that TRUE love is something one feels rather than a rational choice to commit. When the warm fuzzy feelings for another are no longer how they feel toward that spouse, divorce is generally the most common, resulting course.

 

Rooting out the Hollywood addiction to emotional love in the place of GENUINE love is very much like the addiction to religiosity in the place of a truly GENUINE, organic expression and dynamic of true body life.

 

Think about it: It's much easier to give in to the easier life of fading into the woodwork of religiosity than to remain exposed to the transparency of a life in Christ.

 

What I've found to work best is to lay it all out on the line from the start. When everyone is made aware of the beast, then dealing with that beast becomes easier in the long run. Some still leave, others come in. Discussions over what's wrong with institutionalized religion is a common pit-fall for many groups. Peronsality conflicts, pride, and all the other maladies of human nature still play themselves out at times. The trick is for the older, mature men to learn how to lay aside their personal imperfections, and take on the mantle the Lord has laid upon their shoulders; to take that mantle up with integrity and humility. Sometimes hard decisions must be made.

 

We once had to tell a younger fella to either cease the course he was on, or not to return so long as he has it in his heart to continue causing disunity and back-biting. Those things have no place in the gathering of blievers.

 

Religiosity always has the wrong understanding for the purpose of the gathering of blievers. Most think it's for worship and praise.

 

If worship isn't already a part of each member's daily and moment-by-moment lifestyle throughout each week, then there's no magical "worship" switch one can flip on when entering the gathering that the Lord will find acceptable.

 

The prime purpose for the gathering is for mutual edification. It's in each member being edified from which the greatest expressions of praise and worship flow.

 

When we're down-trodden because of edification never being allowed as an enlivening dynamic for the gathering, then a group may as well go ahead and acquire a communal facility with pews or chairs, start up the dead prorgams, and go with the flow practiced by the religious.

 

Regardless of how many people hate this fact, it's a simple choice, really: People are either willing to sacrificially die to self, or they aren't. There are no cookie-cut answers for all groups. The difference is each group member having a willingness to explore the depths of their own spiritual lives so that they can then learn to allow others to help them in the areas where they're weakest.

 

DM

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