What church did Jesus go to?
I'm listening to Paul Vieira, from some talks he did about a week ago. What I'm writing here, starts from him.
In the evangelical church culture that I'm familiar with, people often ask each other, "what church do you go to?" To imagine asking Jesus this question, during his earthly life as a man, illustrates the absurdity of the question, yet we keep asking it and using it as a point of reference. Today, I feel so strongly about how church is a "what", rather than a "where", that I would even hesitate to say that this thing we do, like having (a) church in a house is the church we go to.
When Jesus walked the earth as a man, he went to synagogue "services" and went to the big temple as well. In the midst of that culture and his participation in it, he said, "I will build my church." It seems obvious that he was saying his gathering(s) of people would be something new and different. I don't think he was saying that it's going to be like the synagogue or temple meetings, only with updated theology.
Jesus' church is described and illustrated and documented right there in the four Gospels. Why would we look for a blue print in the rest of the NT? Jesus himself is the blue print. The church is his, he plans it, and builds it. So, Jesus prescribes what the church will be, will do, and be like.
The Gospel accounts are not just history and theology, but praxis.
In the evangelical church culture that I'm familiar with, people often ask each other, "what church do you go to?" To imagine asking Jesus this question, during his earthly life as a man, illustrates the absurdity of the question, yet we keep asking it and using it as a point of reference. Today, I feel so strongly about how church is a "what", rather than a "where", that I would even hesitate to say that this thing we do, like having (a) church in a house is the church we go to.
When Jesus walked the earth as a man, he went to synagogue "services" and went to the big temple as well. In the midst of that culture and his participation in it, he said, "I will build my church." It seems obvious that he was saying his gathering(s) of people would be something new and different. I don't think he was saying that it's going to be like the synagogue or temple meetings, only with updated theology.
Jesus' church is described and illustrated and documented right there in the four Gospels. Why would we look for a blue print in the rest of the NT? Jesus himself is the blue print. The church is his, he plans it, and builds it. So, Jesus prescribes what the church will be, will do, and be like.
The Gospel accounts are not just history and theology, but praxis.
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