Positive About Church

So Sally over at Eternal Echoes proposed a blogging project for today focusing on the positive things about church. Too often we dwell on the things we don't like or the things that need improvement – while such dialogue is necessary, it can often get in the way of talking about the good stuff. Now I have to admit that as I started to think about what to write, I initially came up with a rather snarky and somewhat evil list of reasons I like being part of the emerging church. Positive, yes, but only from a certain point of view. Maybe I'll post it some other time, but today I'll focus on the things I appreciate about our little church community.

At Via Christus, we are a small community that currently gathers in my living room. We don't have a praise band or exciting children's ministries and so we aren't the church for people looking specifically for those things. But for the group we have gathered at the moment, I think we together have been able to meet each other's spiritual needs during the time we have met as a group. I've appreciated the opportunity to be a part of a church with people who know me and are unafraid to open up around me. I have cherished the willingness of the group to jump into discussions and help each other grow intellectually as we dig deep into theology and scripture. I like the freedom to not have to pretend at the rituals of church and instead actually enjoy coming together as a community of believers. I know there are those who find such gatherings uncomfortable or don't think that what we are doing really is church, but those are issues for another day.

It took embracing who we happened to be as a church (as opposed to the attempts to impose some external vision) for me to understand the positive impact the church has had on me. As a church and as individual members we don't fit the contemporary mold for "this is what a church looks like." It took us stopping to pretend to be somebody else and appreciate the distinct personalities and gifts God had called together to settle into a positive identity. And for a church to accept who they are can be a very positive thing indeed.