Moses in the Wilderness

I love the bible study that I have gotten involved with this year. A small group of deep thinkers including a youth pastor, a bible school prof and a few prodding minds. The most intriguing and searching conversations have come out of our evenings. We have been looking at the early church in Acts, and this Wednesday for me was especially interesting. The topic of church structure came up again, but it seemed more personal this time as we dug deeper into our own church situation.

There is no biblical outline for a church system, so what should ours be? Is our current idea of pastor, ministries, boards, etc something that has developed out of necessity, or a type of control? Should church's have their own buildings? Should we be spending money on them when it could be used in other places? As well, Stephen in the early church considered the temple apostasy and beginning of the fall for Israel. Does having a building lead us to believe that God is contained within the building? But a building allows for us to do so many other things for the church and the community. Is the current North American church structure make it more of a capitalist organization concerned with bringing people into the church so that the pastors can get a paycheck and the building can be maintained? (This only skims the surface of everything we talked about.)

We didn't come to a conclusion, and I doubt we will for a long time if at all. But I do believe that there is something within our current situation that has made Christians lazy and complacent. I am working to change that in myself.

Interesting quotes from the evening:

"It was during the difficult times in the desert that the Israelites changed and met God. Maybe the wilderness was the promised land."

"If the church is a sleeping giant, the question is not how do we wake up the giant, but how did we fall asleep."