"God showed up"
I've heard this phrase or variations on it a number of times in different contexts and it seems to mean very different things amongst different flavours of Christianity.
High church: we celebrated the eucharist.
Charismatic: we had a really rocking praise and worship time and/or prayer time.
Biblicist: at least two or three of those that attended were gathered in the name of Jesus.
Any other suggestions?
Posts
4 comments:
Hi Byron, thanks for your blog; I'm enjoying reading your summaries of current issues.
I tried to answer this very question a while back, so I thought I might as well comment:
http://solapanel.org/article/the_greatest_expectations/
My conclusion:
"What should we expect God to do among us when we gather? In a nutshell, we should expect God to be doing his gospel work. We should expect God to be among us, convicting us of sin (Matt 18:16, 20; 1 Cor 5:4-5; 1 Cor 14:24). We should expect Jesus to be among us, rescuing sinners from God's judgment (Matt 18:15; 1 Cor 5:5). Or, looking further afield in the Bible, we should expect Jesus to be among us to enable us to do his will and keep his commandments (Heb 13:20-21; John 14:20-21)—especially the command to love one another (John 15:11-12). We should expect Christ to create the hope of glory in us (Col 1:27). Fundamentally, we should be expecting God, our creator, Lord and saviour, to speak to us in church by his creative and powerful and saving word (John 17:20-23; 1 Cor 14:24; Col 1:5-6)."
Thanks Lionel - a good summary of a host of important themes!
I've heard it spoken about in terms of signs and wonders: "God turned up and made my left leg longer, and there was gold dust everywhere" etc
Re the Matt 18.20 passage, I've often heard it quoted as a simple definition of church (Volf does this if memory serves me correctly). In a sermon the other day our Senior Minister made the simple point that Matt 18.20 is in the context of rebuking a church member, so it's not so much a definition of church as a legitimisation of church discipline. Seems so obvious now...
Both good points. Thanks!
Post a Comment