Institution

Sorry for the length of my post last night.. I will begin making them shorter and more on point immediately..
When I woke up this morning, the "summary" of what I think of the institutional church came to mind.

The Institution of the church(today's modern church) which sets itself up as a machine that saves people is dying or dead. The Modern church, even the big ones that have come about in the last 20-30 years are not necessarily successful... Purpose driven life is successful because it provides a system for churches to redefine their purpose... That is fine and good, but the purpose of the church hasn't really changed that much in the past 2000 years, and won't change that much in the future..The purpose of the church wasn't to get big, have more members, and build more and more buildings.. We tried that already.. look at the fantastic cathedrals in Europe from the middle ages.. That way won't last... Using a few corporate approach words: new words, a new "org structure" can't fix and underperforming and misguided body. We as individuals must change.. and the guiding body will change with us. The church must stem from the people, not dictate to them. Each of us must study, pray and seek God's will for our lives, and our families, and then share those stories with others around us. Churchs must help us do that.

God is very much still here.. he is working in our world. The story goes on, it is still being written..

This changing, evolving, church will become something different in the years to come... to continue to be effective it must evolve to be a living body instead of a dying system. Each unique, each special, each providing and writing its own piece of the ongoing story. The days of the church trying to be everything for everybody, are over. There is lots of literature on this, but I always come back to Brian Mclaren's book - "A New Kind of Christian" as a focus point for these thoughts...

For really interesting reading on this.. look up "Emergent church" on the web and read all about it..