In a nutshell, what I am most intersted in is practical theology, belief put into action. Specifically, I am most concerned with how we live out our beliefs together, in a local congregation of believers. You see, I believe in Jesus, and if you believe in Jesus, you believe in the Church, his body. If you asked a random group of Americans to free-associate with the word 'church', you might hear words like, "boring", "oppressive", "outdated", or "picnic". But for me, it's simply the thing that matters most. It is the center that I try to order my world around. To borrow language from the Missional Church folks, the Church is the sign, pointing to Christ, the foretaste of his Kingdom, and the instrument by which God works in the world. I think if you want to take Jesus seriously, you need to take his church seriously.

That said, the body of Christ doesn’t always look so great these days. Thomas Merton called it "a body of broken bones". I confess, as a member of this body, that we are guilty of arrogance, shallowness, and complacency. I wish to join the voices that say there is much we need to change if we hope to be faithful to the image of the church that is laid out in the New Testament. My favorite church, The Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC, is said to have been birthed out of "a combination of anguish and faith". This describes my experience perfectly. I believe in this church enough to give my life to it, but I find myself almost constantly frustrated.

The purpose of writing this blog is to create a place where I can organize my thoughts on what it means to be the church, find some people to help shape those thoughts, and maybe even dream about what it would take to make some of these ideas a reality.

Oh, and it won’t all be super-serious. This church business is my main focus, but I’m sure I’ll find space for other interests, like movies, music, or baseball. WWJCF? (Who would Jesus cheer for?) I don't know, but not the Yankees, that's for damn sure.

The New Testament is not structured in such a way that gives us a detailed blueprint of what the church is to do and be. We learn of the nature of the church through narrative, metaphor, and by listening in on their earliest conversations. By one scholar’s count, there are as many as 96 different images in the NT. What are we to do with such a variety of information about the church? I appreciate the approach of NT ethicist Richard Hays, who suggests viewing the material through the lens of three "focal images" that will serve as guidelines for understanding the entire body of teaching about the church. These core themes give us broad categories for understanding what is most central and essential to the biblical teaching about the church.

Based on this approach, I believe the essence of the church can be encapsulated by three core concepts: worship, community, and mission. All that the church is relates to one of these three concepts. I think every congregation needs to attend equally to these three areas: spiritual formation, community formation, and missional formation. One network of churches in England uses a simple model that is an effective way to remember these three expressions of the essence of the church. They teach using a triangle to describe a church that is focused up to God (worship), in to each other (community), and out to the world (mission).

The branch of Christianity that I have been a part of has paid a lot of attention to worship/spiritual formation and should continue to do so. However, I think we have a lot of work to do on the other two areas - living life together in community, and our mission of reaching out to the world around us. What I have experienced just seems so different from what I read in the Gospel. But it doesn’t have to be.

Through a Glass, Darkly

The title, "Through a Glass, Darkly" comes from a verse in I Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul's love poem. The idea is that now we live in a broken world, and we experience God's perfect love only in part. We have glimpses of the Kingdom of God, but it is vague, we can just barely make it out sometimes. Between the victory of Christ on the cross and his triumphant return, the church stands in this "time between the times" where it often feels as if the darkness will swallow the light completely. The church as we know it exists in a cursed world, and it is tainted by our sin and frailty. But the light will not be extinguished. Jesus is alive, and the Spirit is active. As we wait for the Kingdom to become fully visible, our job is to strive with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength to be faithful. Our job is to live in such a way as to make our dim reflection of God's Kingdom as clear as possible. The world is watching.