Church is NOT...

Sebuah artikel dari SimpleChurch Journal

Church, by definition is not a building, not a place of worship, not an organization.

As Neil Cole likes to say: “We are the church.  Where we go the church goes.”

“God does not dwell in temples made by human hands.”  Stephen, before being martyred.

Church is not a come-and-sit service to attend.

“The church’s true nature is best seen by the life that Jesus modeled: he took the life of the kingdom everywhere that he went—out into the world that he was ministering to.”  Roger Thoman

Church is not a passive gathering where some participate and others just listen.

“The bleachers are beginning to empty as 707 million action-oriented Christians start to pour out onto the playing field and discover the joy and challenge of every-member ministry.”  Jim Rutz

Church is not a professionally-led entitity.

“In the New Covenant we do not need a human priest (pastor) to mediate or pray for us as we now have a High Priest as our mediator…  Having a pastor as our priest violates our own priesthood as it leads to hierachization, compartmentalization and fragmentation and makes us lazy laity… Priests do not lead worship but the Body of Brethren (Body of men, women and even youth) minister to each other.”  Victor Choudhrie

Church is not a business.

“In the first century in Palestine Christianity was a community of believers. Then Christianity moved to Greece and became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome and became an institution. Then it moved to Europe and became a culture. And then it moved to America and became a business. We need to get back to being a healthy, vibrant community of true followers of Jesus.”  Priscilla Shirer

Church is not a club that isolates from the rest of the world.

“One of the greatest forms of love, as exemplified by Jesus, is to fully join with people and live among them.”  Roger Thoman

“We have to learn to live in the smoking sections of life.”  Neil Cole

Church is not separate from ‘everyday’ life.

“Reorient your own personal paradigm. Your business, workplace or home, wherever you spend most of your time, is your ‘primary nuclear church’.”   Victor Choudhrie

Church is not something that can be contained by walls or controlled by man.

“But what I saw in Kenya, I also see in America and other parts of the world. The virus is leaking. The Reformation of the 21st Century, led by the Holy Spirit, is taking Christianity out of containers into the open spaces of the neighborhoods and nations of the world.”  Brooks Thoman

Sometimes it is in the process of unlearning what church is not that we can make room for becoming more of what God made us to be.