Ok, so my books came that I ordered. That is totally cool…especially since one of them is a text book. The problem is that I’m at total idiot for buying books that I don’t have time to read that I really want to read. I opened up the package and it had “church history in plain language” and “charts of church history” which I really really wanted to read. I mean, this is pretty stupid, I have already turned down an offer to borrow the church history book from Tony on the grounds that I wouldn’t have time to read it right now. So instead I buy the book, and read the preface, which is my second mistake. The preface was awesome. The guy just explained some things I’ve been thinking about and arriving at conclusions for in a much more concise way then I had been able to. So I’m hooked. And the chart book is awesome too, I started flipping through that and it is cool, fortunately I don’t have to read it to get what is going on, because it is a chart…and highly simplified.
Now that I have told you why I shouldn’t have bought these books as well as the other books I bought (“Catholic Christianity” and “Purpose Driven Life”) I will tell you what is good about these books. First, as mentioned before, I have been thinking a lot about the church as a movement vs. the church as an institution. This has come about because as many of you know, that when I join the Vineyard church I will be giving up my membership in the methodist church. And to make this decision, I had to think a lot about what I was leaving….which I have thought about for a long time…..and what I was moving into. The Methodist church was founded by John Wesley a man who some would say is one of the most influential protestant theologians since the reformation, or that is what one of his websites says anyway. But at the time he just wanted to purify his life and give it completely to the lord, and because of that started a movement. That movement gained structure and planted churches all throughout the US, and was powerfully moving with the spirit of God, and in a lot of ways still is. But I feel it has become entrenched in itself, it’s politics, it’s PCness, and has allowed some people preaching heresy to enter into positions of high authority. So I now find myself at the Vineyard, which I often will joke “Is just one accredited seminary shy of being a denomination.” But seriously the Vineyard considers itself a movement and I would agree, because I feel that it is not bogged down with structure and rules and wishes to move in whatever direction the holly spirit takes each individual church. Now, I’ve thought a lot about how both types of structures are necessary today, but it is summed up much more concisely. The book said:
“…I believe the people of God in history live in a tension between ideal – the universal communion of saints – and the specific – the particular people in a definite time and place. The church’s mission in time calls for institutions: special rules, special leaders, special places. But when institutions themselves obstruct the spread of the gospel rather than advancing it, then the movements of renewal arise to return to the church’s basic mission in the world.”
Now that makes me feel sorta smart, cuz this is the same conclusion I arrived at on my own…only he sums it up a lot better then I did. I mean this guy teaches theology and I came up with that on my own…I know it isn’t as like revolutionary as a lot of stuff, but none the less I’m happy that I thought that up. But it also really turned me on to this book, because that is why I bought the book, I want to see what church history will show me, and I’m hoping to just have a better understand as where we, we as in the church, actually comes from.
Ok, I’m finished now….I’ll stop ranting about how smart I’m not.