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PART ONE CHAPTER 1: CONTEXT

and i am like a mockingbird ive got no new song to sing and i am like an amplifier i just tell you what ive heard oh, im like a mockingbird Mockingbird Derek Webb

Right Here, Right Now* After living for ten years in the central highlands of Mexico, my husband Tim and I have just moved back to Orlando, Florida. Technically we are missionaries on furlough but those words have very little to do with how we see ourselves or with what we are doing. Whenever we try to have a meaningful conversation about this stage in our lives, we feel an acute disconnect between our life, which we love, and the words used to describe it. Now that youve left Mexico, are you still missionaries? Do you still need funds from our missions budget? ask responsible missions committee members. We reply, Were still with our mission organization and were still doing the same things as when we lived in Mexico, providing resources and training for youth leaders throughout Latin America. Its just now were doing it out of Orlando instead of Toluca. However, we know we need to improve our answer because people react with a blank stare. They dont understand how we can serve people who live in Latin America while we are living in Orlando. So when will you receive your next assignment? ask Women of the Church circle members who have prayed for us regularly for the past eleven years. We try to explain, They dont assign us. Its a process that were in the middle of but we still dont see the next step clearly, knowing they dont understand this process because it is not what theyre accustomed to. Six months into our furlough we were leading workshops for youth leaders from around South America at a Youth Specialties conference in Mendoza, Argentina, the fourth conference where weve spoken this year. As we were getting into bed after a day filled to overflowing with invigorating time spent with close friends and colleagues, not to mention with the astounding privilege of speaking into the lives of hundreds of leaders, Tim said to me, I need to get a new life. One that doesnt include the word missionary.

Comment: Wow, reading your thoughts and experiences with the word "missionary" really struck a chord with me. At times I have struggled with pride, wanting to be called by that name, wanting people to know how sacrificial I am for living in Guatemala, wanting to see the shock and admiration on their faces when I tell them how long I've lived "overseas." Stupid pride. And more recently, as we plan to move to Colorado, I struggle with my pride as people in Guatemala say, "Ohyou're going back to the States" (which translates: Wow, she couldn't hack it. She's giving up so soon. I'm so much better than her cuz I'm staying). On the other hand, I've been trying to avoid the word "missionary" here in Guatemala especially when it is coupled with the term "evangelical." I don't like the reaction of people when they find out I'm a missionary. Protestants think it is something great and they oooh and aaah, which is not deserved. Catholics immediately treat you differently and have all kinds of suppositions about who you are and more importantly what youre not allowed to do. When we move to Colorado, I would like to just get a job as a Starbucks barista, and be somewhat "normal" for a change. Nell Stiff

2 When we first joined our mission organization, OC International, in the mid 90s, I thought my dislike of the word missionary was simply pride. It conjured up mental images of middle aged people who dressed badly; people who, in the words of Marianne Dashwood, everyone speaks well of but no one wants to talk to. Those images, formed through years of attending countless mission meetings and pot luck suppers, had nothing in common with my late twenties self. But now, after years in the biz, as our friend Chuck calls it, I know that the disconnect between our calling and the stereotypical understanding of missions goes much deeper. At a missions conference held by one of our supporting churches, Tim was introduced to a missionary working in Central America. Since thats our corner of the world and since were always looking to expand our network of ministry partners, Tim asked the man what he did. The missionary looked perplexed and said, Im a missionary. Right, Tim responded, Were missionaries too but we provide resources and training for youth leaders throughout the Spanish speaking world. What do you do? Im a missionary. By now Tim had no interest in working with this man, but he was interested in pushing the pointIm not sure which point exactly.maybe the point that the word missionary doesnt adequately communicate everything to be said about a persons life and work, or maybe just the point that missionaries should have specific responsibilitiesso he pressed on, I understand that. But how exactly do you spend your days when you are in Honduras? Im a missionary, so the man spoke slowly and enunciated his words carefully, like we all do when speaking with someone we think cant understand us, I preach in churches. I lead Bible studies in homes. I visit church members. Until that encounter, we had forgotten that people like that still exist, people whose approach to missions hasnt developed much in the last two centuries, people who move to a country that has had an existing Christian witness for over a hundred years to do what the national church could do, should do and probably is doing. The biblical mandate to make disciples among all nations, tribes and peoples is unchanged but the needs and the context of those peoples have changed as the world and the progress of missions has changed, so our way of doing missions has to change, or at least be examined critically. Tims and my existential angst, the dissonance between the reality of our lives and the vocabulary and mental images of people we interact with, is part of a bigger picture. Missions is just one element of the people and institutions we call the church which is in the same situation: the biblical principles underlying it remain the same but, because the context in which it exists is changing, the models need to be examined and adapted.

3 Orlando, Florida The population of Orlando was 460,000 and growing by 1,000 families a week when Tim moved there in 1987 to take his first job after college. Although the growth rate has slowed some since then, Orlando is now home to over 2 million people and continues to be a case study in change, as an article in the March 2007 edition of National Geographic Magazine put it, Everything happening to America today is happening here. During the ten years Tim and I lived in Mexico, Orlandos suburbs expanded dramatically. My younger sister lives with her family in a part of the exurb of Oviedo that was orange groves and cattle pastures surrounding a one light town in the early 90s. Although I like shopping at Target and thoroughly enjoy a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato, Im not a big fan of the suburbs more of the same, stretching further and further out. Nevertheless, lots of people want the low maintenance of a new home paired with the convenience of easy access to strip malls. But not all of the change has been suburban, or exurban, sprawl. When Tim used to skateboard downtown, it was virtually deserted in the evening. After the bankers and business people went home, a sheet of newspaper would blow down the empty streets like a tumbleweed in a ghost town. But now people are fixing up the areas charming old houses and preserving the huge oak trees and azalea bushes along the brick paved streets. But not all of the older houses around town are being refurbished. Since weve been back weve continually seen the demolition of homes in the Winter Park/ Maitland area of town where we now live. On our morning walks around the neighborhood we watch the changes in our surroundings with great interest. Weve gotten so we can identify the signs of a house about to bite the dust. At first the place has an empty, forlorn look about itlong grass, unkempt gardens, an empty drivewayas if the owners were away on a long trip. Then the death knell is sounded by the erection of a silt fencea two foot high green or black mesh netting which skirts the yard. The demolition itself usually follows pretty quickly after that. In a matter of days, sometimes only two or three, the entire house vanishes. All that is left is a surprisingly small patch of sandy dirt in the middle of the yard. We assume that these older houses lacked contemporary musthaves like central air conditioning or large master bathrooms with a whirlpool or that they were too small to sit on some of the citys most coveted land. In every case they were torn down when a convergence of factors make it more economical, in the broadest sense of the term, to build something new instead of maintaining the old. Watching this going on around me on a daily basis has given me a framework for thinking about models in general. Whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we like it or not, the landscape of the models of what we call church is undergoing changes that parallel the changes in real estate in central Florida. Globalization, technology and communication are some of the factors that are allowing for a mass reproduction of successful models of church. For example, from Alaska to

Comment: Ah, another touch-point for conversationIve given a lot of thought to this suburban reality and how it has been wedded with our Christian beliefs. Safety, convenience, consumerism, etc. are all unfortunately an important part of the evangelical suburban church. dt. haase

Comment: Why do we always look at tearing down the old as something bad? We blame developers saying that they are destroying beauty. Can change also bring beauty? It doesnt always, but sometimes we fail to see it because we are so caught up in mourning the death of the past. Aaron Arnold

4 Tierra del Fuego you will find congregations that have led small groups using Rick Warrens 40 Days of Purpose or that have sung some translation of Shout to the Lord distributed by Hillsong Music of Australia. More of the same, spreading further out. The gentrification of downtown is paralleled in the return to ancient ways to practice the Christian faith. This is happening in a variety of ways like the recovery of the spiritual disciplines and the pursuit of Eastern Orthodoxy or Celtic Christianity as well as by the literal renovation and reclamation of once majestic church buildings that had been left to decay in urban centers. And then there is the tearing down, the deconstruction. Im not referring to external attacks like the negation of miracles under Modernity or a Postmodern denial of absolute truth. Im talking about a growing, global, grass roots dissatisfaction with the methods and models associated with the church. Like the old homes in Winter Park, many methods and models related to the Christian faith are being marked for demolition. Similar to the dissonance Tim and I feel between our lives and the traditional perception of a missionary, many followers of Christ feel an acute disconnect between their values and core beliefs and the traditions and cultural perception related to their faith. There is a growing awareness that Christians need to break out of our evangelical ghetto, with its culture and jargon, in order to engage in meaningful conversation with the world around us. In the face of the dramatic cultural change happening around us, the ecclesiastical landscape will not, and I believe should not, look the same a generation from now as it does today. Latin America, 2000-2006 Ive spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking about principles, models, and methods, the differences between them and the process of turning principles into models that are put in to practice through methods. An American colleague of ours in Mexico, Steve Young, used to introduce this topic by inviting a local youth leader to join him at the front of our training seminar. Steve would chose someone who provided a physical contrast to himself, not usually difficult as he has blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin and dresses like an American. He would then explain that principles are basic, fundamental elements like the human skeleton. Even though Steve and the Mexican leader were obviously very different models, Steve would remind us all that they had the same bone structure. We moved to Mexico to train youth leaders. Tims call to missions was a statistic from Youth Worker Journal in the late 80s stating that 95% of the worlds trained youth workers lived in the US which had only 6% of the worlds youth. Through a process similar to the one were currently in the middle of, we considered a number of countries where the church had asked the OC team working there for help in the area of youth ministry. According to the 1995 Mexican Census, 50% of the population of Mexico was below the age of 18 and although Christian denominations would have periodic large

Comment: When I first arrived in Dublin, I was struck by quantity of churches and cathedrals. I expected some, but not that many. But then I was struck by the number of them not being used for church. In one of the largest cosmopolitan European cities with more people living there than ever before, the church buildings are going to ruin. Many of them were being used for other purposes; one was a pub, Saint Andrews holds the main tourist office, and Saint Patricks cathedral, while still holding services, was a museum. A gift shop took up the back portion of the sanctuary hawking trinkets of Saint Patrick or John Bunyan--a sign that tourists were more apt to visit than parishioners. Cameron Crawford

Comment: If it does, then it will look like the church in Western Europe. Aaron Arnold

5 motivational events for teenagers and young adults, there was virtually no training available specifically for youth leaders. In the US at that point it seemed that training for youth ministry centered either on specific methods (how to lead a small group, for example) or on a model created by a particular ministry. We didnt want to promote a model of youth ministry, especially if that model had been created in the US. Instead we wanted to teach basic principles of ministry drawn from the Bible, the skeleton so to speak, to leaders who would then flesh out those principles, developing models and methods appropriate for their unique context. So it was a perfect fit in 2001 when we met up with an organic movement called Raices (the Spanish word for roots which Ill use from now on for clarity). Roots provides youth leaders with in-depth training based on biblical principles, not methods or models, through conferences as well as through a textbook accompanied by twenty interactive classes about youth ministry. As Roots continually evaluates our training, we have seen how difficult it is for people to transition from principles to practice. For example, Veronica, the paid youth pastor of our congregation in Mexico, has a seminary degree and years of experience in youth ministry. She attended the Roots conference in Paraguay in 2002 and worked as a tutor in the two conferences the next year but it wasnt until she spent a month working alongside a community that lives out what the conference teaches that she felt like she understood what she had been hearing. But even since her A-Ha! moment, Veronica has found that fleshing out all the principles in her day-to-day ministry isnt easy. In his book Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: hard lessons from an emerging missional church, Mark Driscoll describes one of the reasons for this:
One of the greatest inhibitors of keeping a church on mission is the erroneous spoken and unspoken expectations people have for church leaders and their families. In a missional church, the lead pastor is the architect who builds the ship more than he is the captain that pilots it, the cook who washes dishes in the galley, or the activities director who coordinates the shuffleboard reservations. The role of the architect is incredibly important because most pastors have been trained how to work on a ship instead of how to build a ship.

Comment: A fascinating and huge point. dt. haase

Architecture has always interested me but a conversation with the leading educational architect in Argentina got me thinking about its relationship to the church. Over tea I asked the architect, Jeffery, about post-modern architecture. Postmodernism was avant-garde in youth ministry in Latin America at that point so I was surprised when Jeffery said that in architectural circles it was already pass. I was fascinated by the chance to get a glimpse into the future so I pressed him to explain where architecture had gone since postmodernism. Jeffery explained how he encouraged his architecture students to reach back in time beyond structures whose form was dictated by classical style and norms to models that had developed organically to address the practical needs of the surrounding region. For example, he was building a school in a region of Argentina where local construction originally incorporated overhanging eaves into the design to shade the windows from the powerful afternoon sun. By learning about this tradition and including it into his

6 design, he was able to significantly improve the energy efficiency of the building and the comfort of the students in the afternoons. So post-postmodern architecture, according to Jeffrey, was the marriage of indigenous architectural wisdom with cutting edge technology and materials in order to create structures that would best meet the broad spectrum of the needs of the individuals who would be using the building. Ive revisited that conversation many times in the years since. The biblical role of the leader is to prepare God's people for works of service (Ephesians 4:11, 12) not to do everything themselves. However, for leaders to be architects who can envision a model that responds to the specific needs of the individuals around them, they need the vision and the tools to carry out that role. Metaphors can be useful tools in this process because they help us focus in on a particular characteristic of a principle without losing us in the details of a model. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast; its like a mustard seed; like a net let down into a lake.: each one of these images helps us get a handle on a specific aspect of the big picture. A metaphor strips away some things and highlight others, allowing us see more clearly. Several years ago www.ParaLideres.org, the web site that we founded to provide resources and training for Spanish speaking youth leaders, offered a prize to the best contemporary retelling of the parable of the prodigal son. In an effort to help the participants understand the rationale for the project, I prepared a justification paper in which I talked about the role and function of the church through the discussion of three metaphors: a monument, a weathervane and a compass. Admittedly, my original treatment of these images was simplistic, but over the years as I have continued to think about them they have developed, becoming tools that help me discern what is going on around and inside me.

Comment: And I would argue it is not the tool we are lacking but rather the vision and more specifically a Biblical & Practical Theology of the Holy Spirit. dt. haase

Gardening at 6042 My mother always refers to her home, present or past, by its address. I grew up at 6042a long grey brick house on three acres of unplowed prairie on the east side of Wichita, KS. Because my mother loves gardens and my father loves trees, my older sister and I grew up working in the flower beds and dragging hoses across the property to water the trees. In addition to this general maintenance every year my sister and I were given a garden of our own to plant and care for. Mine was below my parents bedroom window. It seemed like a very large area to be responsible for, but fortunately there were a number of bushes that took up some of the space. It seemed to me that I spent every Saturday during the spring and early summer working in the gardens. I suppose it wasnt every single Saturday but I did spend a lot of time preparing the soil for new seeds and plants, creating a clean edge between the garden and the encroaching grass and, of course, weeding. From what I learned on those Saturdays I could write I book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in the Garden. I saw that investing time to prepare the soil well before planting

7 the seeds saves hours of weeding down the road. I learned the importance of distinguishing between what Id planted and weeds when theyre still just sprouts. I realized that its better to weed regularly, because the longer you wait the more the weeds spread and the deeper their roots get. And I saw that the life, the growth, and the beauty of the garden came from God. In The Four Loves C.S. Lewis describes the interplay between the life of a garden and the work of the gardener:
when the garden is in its full glory the gardeners contributions to that glory will still have been in a sense paltry compared with those of nature. Without life springing from the earth, without rain, without light and heat descending from the sky, he could do nothing. When he has done all, he has merely encouraged here and discouraged there, powers and beauties that have a different source. To liberate that splendor, to let it become fully what it is trying to be, to have tall trees instead of scrubby tangles, and sweet apples instead of crabs, is a part of our purpose.

I see a parallel between gardening and the three metaphors that have become part of my framework for thinking about the church. The images allow me to liberate the splendor of the church by helping me discern what to prune, what to nourish and what weeds to pull out. So in Part Two I will elaborate on my experience with each of these types of congregations in hopes that they may be of service to you. May God give you eyes to see what He would have you see and ears to hear what He says to you, because of, in spite of, or wholly independent of what is written here for Christ and His Kingdom.

Comment: I see it in a more drastic light. We have roses at our house. I must admit that I dont know a lot about them, but the caretaker of our pasaje told me that you have to cut them all the way down to about a foot and a half tall. Here I was chopping off what looked like GOOD branches. I was sure that it was going to die. But when spring came the growth was more than impressive. I had more roses than I had ever imagined. Aaron Arnold

CHAPTER 2: ECCLESIOLOGY 101 or WHAT THE HECK IS THE CHURCH ANYWAY?

You see, its not about church. Its about the Church Revolution George Barna

It is so easy to get muddledIt is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objectseducation, building, missions, holding services.the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis

Terences rooftop with Chase straddling the railing So I called up Travis and said, I want you to go somewhere with me tonight. Im not gonna tell you where were going. Just trust me on it, OK? and Trav said, Youre not going to make me go to church, are you?* Chase was trying to make a point about what his friends think about what Christians do when they gather together but I interrupted him, Ive gotten to the point where I cant stand to hear people talk about going to church. The church is not a building so why do we, people who know better, continue to talk as if it were? I know that everyone uses the word that way, and when you say it people know what you mean, but it bugs me every time I hear it. Tim chimed in, I want to get a t-shirt printed up that says in big letters on my chest, Stop Going to Church. And when people ask me about it, Ill turn around and show them the back that says Start Being the Church. Many of us who have spent years going to church are finally starting to ask questions like, do I really need to go to church? Why? What if I dont get anything out of it? Is God really happiest with me when my life is full of religious activities? These questions reflect a deeper one: What is church anyway? (*By the way, Chase wanted Travis to go Midnight Bowling with him.)

Comment: I would like to state the obvious irony here. The church is one of Gods instruments for meeting needs, (Hebrews 10:25-encouragement) and yet we ask ourselves if we need to go to church. Maybe thats because needs are not being met??? Aaron Arnold Comment: My older teens and twenty-somethings see no use in church. I'm interested in finding alternate expressions of church that they might "get." I'm sure there are a lot of others out there who sense the same felt needs. Steve Miller Comment: This has always been an interesting question for me as wellespecially since our life is lived on a Christian college campus which includes closer fellowship and community than anything we get at church not to mention the fact that we worship/pray/serve with these students, etcThere is even communion once a month as a whole community and the word is preached at least three times a week in chapel dt. haase

East Wichita, Kansas When I was little I thought that the globe in my fathers den showed the world exactly as it was. I knew the land itself wasnt pink or blue like it was colored on the globe, but I did think that the shapes of the countries were as fixed as the shapes of the continents. The geography I was taught in elementary school seemed as unquestionable as any other subject. When my family set off on a car trip to Texas I fully expected to drive over lines painted on the ground between the states. I remember being surprised when I found out

9 that state lines and national borders were arbitrary, instead reflecting the intrinsic nature of the land and its people. In much the same way, I grew up with the sense that the essence of church was the general order of worship we followed at 11 A.M. every Sunday morning at Eastminster Presbyterian Church at 9th and Armour: welcome, announcements, a hymn, a Bible reading, a sermon, a song during the offering, the Doxology, another hymn and the benediction. Because I went to a Lutheran middle school, a Roman Catholic high school, a Baptist university, and have worshipped with Pentecostal and charismatic congregations throughout Latin America, Ive had contact with the gamut of Christian denominations. By and large, despite our theological differences, we all do pretty much the same things in our services. We file into a room and take our places looking at the backs of each others heads. We sit down and stand up accordingly, depending on if we are speaking or being spoken to. We sing. We pray. We listen to a song. We listen to a sermon. We file out of the meeting room, chat for a few minutes, and go home. Charismatics get a better aerobic workout than their more traditional siblings and the Roman Catholics break the mold here and there, genuflecting, kneeling, and requiring extra-curricular activities like confession, but the overall format is virtually the same. This led me to believe that God had specifically prescribed much, if not all, of this hour long ritual. It has taken more than a few road trips across unpainted state lines for me to get past this view of church. Several years into our time in Mexico our colleague from Spain, Felix Ortiz, encouraged the Roots board members to read Postmodern Youth Ministry by Tony Jones. At the time I underlined the following:
Sorry. No Models Inside This book will not give you a model for your youth ministry. That is not my purpose. I do not have the largest youth group in my area, and Im not trying to sell you a system or a paradigm.. Instead of promoting a new paradigm, we must deconstruct the old paradigms and then propose a series of reflections on culture, the church and the state of youth ministry as we begin the third millennium.

Comment: I have had the same experience in my extensive exposure to so many different church flavors. They claim to be so different, but the level on which the differences lie are mostly insignificant at best. Its like the difference between dark blue and navy blue. Only Crayola can tell the difference. Aaron Arnold

When I first read this, the word deconstruct sounded terribly aggressive, like the demolition of one of the houses in our neighborhood. But I have come to believe that you only know what to save, what to remodel and what to tear down after you have done some critical analysis, some deconstruction. 5422 Clinton Boulevard, Jackson, MS After five years at Baylor University I had a double major in Professional Writing and Spanish but felt like I wasnt prepared for a job in the real world so, like many of my peers, I decided to get a masters degree. But first I had to decide what to study. In college I loved my two semesters of photojournalism--in photography I had finally discovered an art form that didnt depend on any coordination between my brain and my

10 hands--so I started researching photography schools and putting together a portfolio of photos to submit for admission into a program. During that time I visited The Peoples Republic of Mongolia with my mother and my two sisters to collect data for a report on a proposed missionary project. Working on that report I realized the critical role of words in clear, comprehensive communication. As a result I decided not to study photography but to continue along the lines of writing. Because I lacked more confidence in my perspective and opinions than in my technical skills, I decided to study Bible and theology to get a firmer foundation from which to write. My father asked a family friend, Dr. John Gerstner, who had been theologian-inresidence at Eastminster asked which school he recommended for me. Dr. Gerstner replied, Reformed Theological Seminary [RTS] in Jackson, Mississippi. Ive been invited to teach a class in the winter term so Ill see you there. Throughout my graduate work at RTS it slowly dawned on me that many of the things I had assumed were clearly spelled out in the Bible, werent and that I had been feeding off Gods word like a baby bird. I had been dependent on what someone else had hunted down and then regurgitated for my consumption. The first day of class on the Pauline Epistles the professor, Knox Chamblin, asked students to share the questions they were hoping to have answered during course of the semester. As my classmates, many of whom were older than I and had years of ministry experience, said things like I want to understand the relationship between chapter six and chapter seven of Romans, I realized that they were looking for answers to questions I hadnt even formed yet. What is the church? is one of the questions I had never really asked. As a result, although I sat through classes on ecclesiology and read extensively about the history of the church I didnt pay much attention to the information fed to me. But now, after forty years of going to church, five years of attending masters level seminary courses, and ten years of being a missionary, now I really want to know, what is the church? Is it somewhere you go? Something you do? Something you are? What is the relationship between what Ive done on Sunday mornings all my life and what God wants from and for his people? Ive read that an education doesnt teach you everything you need to know; instead it teaches you how to find what you need when you need it. At RTS I watched my professors submit their opinions and their personal preferences to what was revealed by a meticulous investigation of the biblical manuscripts. They corroborated their personal interpretation with the perspectives of their present community and with what God has been teaching his people throughout the centuries. So now its time for me to do just that with the church. My starting point is to discover what the Bible says about church, so I pull out my Bible and my study tools. First I try to get a handle on the word itself. From my Greek New Testament and Kittles Theological dictionary I learn that ekklesia, the Greek word we translate church, was the everyday word used for an assembly of any kind, not just for a religious one. I also learn that there is a continuity between ekklesia in the New

11 Testament and the sacred assemblies (qahal in Hebrew) that God established for his people in the Old Testament. I also research which other words are used by biblical authors to refer to the church because when I look up church in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology it tells me that, if one is to be true to the NT testimony, it must be acknowledged that there is a multiplicity of images and concepts that contribute to an understanding of the nature of the church. Some of these related ideas are the house of God, Gods household, Gods people, the chosen race, Israel of God and one body with many members. With this background in mind, I pull out my NIV concordance and read through all the places that church and its synonyms appear in the Bible. I pay special attention to the term house of God because it is the phrase from which the English word church is derived and because it has the idea of a holy place that most people mean when they say church. The Bible uses the phrase to talk about where God dwells but it also says explicitly that God does not dwell in a building built by human hands (1st Kings 8:27; Acts 17:24) but with his people (Exodus 29:45; Revelation 21:3): For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. " (2nd Corinthians 6:16) My study convinces me that defining questions about church are not when or where but who and for what purpose. In short, the church is the assembling of the people of God, as Paul says in 1st Corinthians 11:18 I hear that when you come together as a church I find the clearest picture of the essence, the ultimate nature, of church in Matthew 18:20, For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. These observations are supported by the witness of history. Martin Luther defined the church as the spiritual assembly of souls and tried to help people see that the biblical idea is not centered in a building or in clergy but that the true, real, right essential church is a matter of the spirit and not of anything external. The great 17th century English pastor Richard Baxter defined the church as a holy Christian societythats the who for ordinary holy communion and mutual help in Gods public worship and holy livingthats the for what purpose.

Overlooking Lake Maitland, FL Ive read that a person is defined by the things they wont get rid of. If thats true Im defined by books, music, art, clothing and memorabilia because that is about all we took with us when we left Mexico. The guest bedroom of the apartment we moved into in Florida was empty, except for a bookcase, which turned out to be the very thing we most needed. The majority of my books are stacked there, loosely organized by genre and author, but a few are housed in the living room with its fabulous lake view: our devotional materials, Bible study tools and my C.S. Lewis collection. In a collection of essays entitled Present Concerns, Lewis has a brief piece called Talking about Bicycles where he opines that there are four ages we can pass through

12 in our relationship to nearly everything: the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age. When I was young I was Unenchanted about the church; nice people took care of me in the nursery or served me juice and windmill shaped cookies during Sunday School but in general, as Lewis says, it was just part of the huge meaningless background of grown-up [activities]. With time I was drawn into the Enchanted Age by stories like David and Goliath, Ruth and Esther. While I was still in elementary school I helped my mother teach Junior Church telling stories accompanied by illustrated poster boards or flannel graph. I would fill up a colorful felt background with animals and birds while telling about creation or Noahs ark or add blocks to the Jerusalems destroyed wall as Nehemiahs men rebuilt it with their swords ready on their belts. These scenes and stories impacted me deeply (I can still picture the marble columns and the golden throne in King Xerxes palace from the flannel graph). Through them God became someone who fills the world with life and color, who works out his plans through beauty pageants and children with slingshots, someone who loves me and sent his son to die for my sins. Church was the place where I learned more about Him, sang songs, and taught other children the stories I knew. There were many factors that led me gradually into the Disenchanted Age. I spent long evenings at pot luck suppers with dishes whose primary ingredients included cream of something soup when I would much rather have beenwell, doing just about anything else. There was the growing estrangement with my peers in Sunday School because I was different: I didnt go to the same school they did; I was young, hence less mature physically and probably socially, for my grade; and my family traveled a lot. But I think the clincher was getting old enough to see the dark underbelly of the church. My parents were very involved in the congregational life and my father was an elected leader, which provided ample opportunity for me to hear about actions and attitudes in people that were anything but Christian. Finally, my move from a Catholic high school in Kansas to a Baptist university in Texas sent me into a tailspin regarding my relationship to the institution and the culture called church. I hit head on what Steve Stockman, in his book Walk On, calls a strange quirk about the church,
it has specific qualities that indicate whether you are [a Christian]. Usually they have to do with swearing, smoking, and drinking. For some reason, there are biblical teachings that do nothold so much importance. Among them: materialistic greed, bigoted prejudice, the oppression of women, or the neglect of social justice. Somehow you can ignore many of the rallying cries of Christ and the prophets, and because you are a teetotalerand attend church twice a week, you are declared spiritually strong.
Comment: In his time leading a congregation made up of the right brained and the left behind," my friend David sees such oddities in the way the other churches treat members of his gathering. "You would think that smoking is one of the seven deadly sins," he exclaimed to me one day. "I think people want to save these Christians a second time. And until they scrub off their tattoos, throw away their non-socially accepted piercings, and stop smoking, they aren't considered worthy of speaking into ideas of Christ and philosophy." Cameron Crawford

I was still ambivalent about the church when I arrived at seminary but through studies of the New Testament records Dr. Chamblin showed me that as a follower of Christ I needed to love what He loves. Jesus loves the Church so much that he gave his life for her. In Talking About Bicycles Lewis explains that a Re- enchanted person is not in the least deceived about the reality of a thing but can appreciate its value and glory,

13 under all the other experiences it is still there like a shell lying at the bottom of a clear, deep pool. Knowing, being supported by and working with individual members of the body of Christ around the world who are amazing has been drawing me into Reenchantment with the Church. Even in their present form as jars of clay, they are absolute treasures. I cant wait to see them in their blinding radiance when they are polished up so that they perfectly reflect Gods glory. What is the church? No answer is complete unless it includes the vision John saw and recorded in Revelation 21:2,3,
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

Comment: At the risk of sounding clich (which in and of itself is clich to write that), I think that the only way to become re-enchanted with the church is through the deconstruction of our religion so that we can refocus on the relationship aspect. If the who question with regards to the church comes first, then that underscores more the fundamental aspect of relationship. May its not just who but with whom? Aaron Arnold