my Ecclesiology or in other words, my view of the church - Part 3

Sorry for the delay on this... My father spent the last few days in the hospital so I have been a bit preoccupied. Things are much better now so we can continue with the task at hand - The second battle that the church will have to fight. Battle #2 is The Battle for the role of Church in my life and in the life of the culture.
Hebrews 10:25 (New Living Translation)
And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

In years past, it has been Christian practice that if you have a friend who is ready to start a relationship with God, or if we have a friend that we want to accept God (whether they are ready or not) we bring them to church. By which we mean a building and a Sunday morning or Saturday night service. We were taught and believed that if we could just "get them to church" God would work on their hearts and they would suddenly become "hungry for God."

Worship experiences are not designed to make you hungry for God. They are designed to fill you up.
Hunger comes from exercise… exercising your faith is the key to staying hungry in your spiritual life.
Bringing people to church to find a hunger for God will not work. Living out your faith in front of them will create the hunger that coming to church will fill.

We are going to have to re-assess the role of church in our lives. We need to grab ahold of the reality that church truly is me, but the role of church as a community is also vital. Wherever I go, I take church with me. The Holy Spirit living inside of me empowers me to accomplish great things through Him. I can walk with my friends through the process of their receiving Christ. I can minister to them in their time of need. I can be the pastor of my world as I move in it. And then Sunday morning, dried up and used from a week of ministry, I drag myself into church "the building" or the community, desperate to hear from God and be filled up for another week of amazing ministry as we walk with God and observe and join His work in and around us.

Church (the building) is no longer enough. It never was, but that is more evident now than ever before. We must actually live out our faith daily. Or it amounts to nothing. And you see these people around you all the time. They are the ones who come to church every week but are critical and nit picky. Why? because they are not hungry... Why? no exercise...

So the building must be a place that we come each week poured out from a week of serving and ministering to our sphere of influence. Sunday worship service still has great value if we understand the truth that we don't go to church, we are the church. And the power of a spiritually alive life comes not from attending a Sunday service alone, but from being poured out each week in exercise of our faith. In this way we find worship service to be extremely valuable and a necessary part of our lives. So are you struggling to want to go to church? this may say more about your own faith exercise than the church you are currently attending.

May you be compelled to action by Christ's love. May you live to serve your sphere of influence. May each Sunday morning find you desperate for God to fill you up. And may you become a powerful part of your church - personal, local, and corporate.