Doing Church

Q, What is attractive about The Church to the world?

Q, What is glorious about The Church in the eyes of the world?

We want to encourage people to come Christ.

How do we do this?

Are they going to just wonder into the meeting on Sunday?

Ephesians 3:10
10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,

How is the manifold wisdom of God going to be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms through The Church?

Are the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms going to go to the meeting on Sunday?

Are the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms going to attend mass next week?

Obviously we must let Christ be known in The World.

Isaiah 40:5
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Gods vision is that all mankind together will see his glory. God wants his glory revealed to The world.

How is this going to happen?

Is all mankind going to ‘go to church’ next week?

Jesus gave a demonstration of revealing his glory.

John 2:1-11
Jesus Changes Water to Wine
1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, 2and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."
4"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come."
5His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
6Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
7Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.
8Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."
They did so, 9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."
11This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
Jesus revealed his glory by turning water into wine.

This was a wedding reception. The religious bit had taken place earlier. It was not in a church. It was amongst the ‘churched,’ ‘de-churched’ and ‘un-churched’ It was amongst all mankind.

There didn’t seem to be that much of a ‘wow factor’

As I said, it was not a religious setting.

This leads to another question.

What has ‘going to church’ got to do with our mission as Gods Covenant People?

Cafe Church is one method, Having 'church' in a pub is another, and there are many other ways.

God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son and the world has a right to

But Café Church and the church meeting down the pub also have problems.

The Church in the pub has people above a certain age in the pub wanting old hymns and no modern songs while those below a certain age don’t want any songs at all. Due to the secularists getting their own way for so long, we have generations not having a clue about Christianity while the older generations have fond memories of Christianity.

The problem is obviously a generation gap.

Most songs sang in church would be incomprehensible to people outside the church.

Café Church has the same problem. The songs make it just like another service.

Therefore God must be praised by different methods.

One of the Hebrew words for praise means ‘tell of’ so we are called to tell of him.

I believe that some in the ‘emergent church’ have got it wrong, when they talk about different ways of ‘doing church.’

We shouldn’t be ‘doing church’ we should be ‘being church.’

While we are ‘being church’ we should speak of Christ.