The Best Model

When it seems that the church has gone off the rails and we find ourselves with more frustration and confusion than peace and a sense of holy presence, we often go back and re-visit that powerful rendering of the Day of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts.  Somehow it has the power to help us see things, not as we have made them, but as God intended them to be.  What is revealed in those words filled with fire and wind is a reminder that the church is a spiritual community designed to be Holy Spirit driven.    

What seems apparent is that such no longer describes the ecclesiastical landscape.  The church of our day is driven more by culture and consensus than the Holy Spirit and the Holy Word He inspired "...so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."  (II Timothy 3;17)  So much of the spiritual and theological confusion of our day only speaks to this fundamental change.    Of course, what we quickly realize as we read the story in Acts is that it does not take long for the church to lose its way.  Hardly a few minutes had passed before there was confusion about the care of the poor.  And, the Hebrew attitude toward the Gentiles almost turned the new church into a Jerusalem based sect rather than a world wide spiritual community.  

Perhaps, the best model for the church to embrace is the one to which Paul points us as he writes, "He (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church..." (Colossians 1:18)  We often seem to have forgotten that the church is the embodiment of the body of Christ in the world which means that the church ends up being empty of things like love, grace, mercy, and self-sacrifice. A church not willing to go to the cross is no longer the church of Christ.