Imagine Church

What if church was less about a gathering on Sunday morning and more about what happens during the week? What if it was about a daily, week-long, life-long commitment to fellowship and worship in the truest form? How would that transform our weekly meeting? Imagine a church where people are committed to one another, perhaps in smaller groups, and to living faithfully each day, encouraging one another in their labor in Christ. Then on Sunday morning, when Christ rose from the dead, they gather and they don't cram all their spirituality into an hour but they celebrate it fully together, having lived it out and embraced it during the week. I imagine that their worship service would become a service of celebration and sharing, where they tell stories about God's work in their lives, where they sing songs and offer praise to God, where they learn and study together, and where they also share each others struggles and engage their suffering. Imagine Sunday as a sabbath, where the real work of discipleship has been done in six days and the seventh is about rest and celebration. Imagine church not as a weekly event but as a daily dance into which we invite all who would come and we welcome them to follow Jesus along with us. I would attend that church, it would be worth getting up in the morning to be part of that church... What if we were that church?

Let not church be a "wish dream," as Bonhoeffer called it, an ideal which gets in the way of our ability to devote ourselves to an imperfect church. But also, let not church become void of imagination and without creativity and freshness. Be open to the endless possibilities, all of which are bound together in the one word, one molding clay, "church."

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