Today marks the first of a series of posts on the Christian church. This is also the first of hopefully many posts to fall into the 'Faith' category on this site. I've been turned on to this topic by some studies I've done in the past by Christian authors like Francis Chan, John Eldredge, and David Platt. Each one of those authors seem to say, in one way or another, that when you get really sold out for Jesus you start to realize that the things you might learn from "the church" could be...well...wrong. They could be things that you were raised to believe by your family or by the society you grew up in or even by your current fellowship, but we have to be ready to challenge those beliefs in order to define and pursue the true faith. So my first challenge is to define the church as Jesus would have it defined.
I intend to cover some very basic questions over the next several posts like the following:
- What is the church?
- Where does the church come from?
- Why does the church exist?
But I also want to get into some other, more difficult questions, for instance:
- Who comprises the church?
- Can any one group of believers or denomination claim to be the true church?
- Is the church that we know today in the 21st century the same church that Jesus spoke of?
Now, let me be clear about something from the very beginning: I'm no Bible scholar. I'm a layman. Like the majority of Christians today I make my living doing something else. I study the Bible when I can, certainly not as much as I should. Admittedly, there are times when I'm not even sure that I want to learn anymore about my Savior. I know that I want to want that though, if that makes sense. At this point in my relationship with Jesus and in my research on this subject I'm not even sure whether to capitalize the word "church". The point of this exercise is obviously not to show you how much I know but for you and me to learn from each other and from those who have come before.
I will focus this study on the Bible itself and supporting study materials like concordances, dictionaries, and a few commentaries. I've been going through a study of "Grasping God's Word" by Duvall and Hays with some other Christ following men (Hi Guys!) and will try to stick to its methodology of reading and interpreting the Scriptures. I'll try to explain that methodology organically within the posts where needed. That may require a whole new series of posts someday though. The GGW study has been very enlightening to say the least.
Finally, I want to encourage your participation with this series (and this blog in general!). I'm much more interested in a dialogue than a monologue because, frankly, I just don't feel like I'm all that interesting on my own. Tell me what you like, what you disagree with, maybe you could even tell me what questions you'd like answered in a series like this. I'll sure someone out there has some answers that they'd love to share with us!
First up is "What is the church?" Stay tuned...