GOING AND BEING

Going to church, singing, listening to a sermon and giving money… may be the easiest form of Christianity ever imagined. Until the Roman Emperor Constantine (272-337) made Christianity a religious and political combination by embracing some early Christian teaching along with common Greek Mythology and a little mixture of leftover Babylonian paganism into Roman Empire political systems and out of it grew Roman politico-church temple model with government sponsored clergy and church buildings. The pockets of earlier small groups of believers were discouraged politically and by the new imposed clergy system. ‘Going to church’ was soon the norm.

This early development soon (and still does) moved the disciples of Jesus from organic and various small gathered duplicating expressions of life together since Pentecost to a formal, professional temple church, like the Jewish model it evolved away from. Living in smaller community with disciples and people who do not know Jesus is a difficult and almost unknown and unwanted experience for many today. Life at this smaller expression is the koinonia, or fellowship, ‘holding something in common’ like in Acts 2:42. Strong’s word Studies calls it ‘communal participation among believers’ (Strong’s #2842). It is more Being church than Going to church. It is being the church all the time…instead of just on Sunday morning.

“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Jesus