The Church

I'm currently working on an assignment which is looking at understanding the church by understanding the Holy Spirit. It doesn't take long to realise that it is not possible to only understand the church by understanding the Spirit, but also by understanding Christ. The church is the body of Christ, but the Spirit is the life of the church. It is what unifies us and brings Christ into the church and us to Christ. But what is the church? The church is the gathering of believers, not a building or even structure of people. If there is only one person in the world that believes in the reconcilatory work of Jesus, is that church? It seems to suggest not as one person is not a gathering. Church is understood then as two things; 1) it is a fellowship of believers and 2) it is a product of the gospel. The scriptures proclaim the good news, that is, the redemptive work of God and Jesus in bringing reconciliation to the world. As a result of people partaking in this reconciliation by believing in the work of Jesus a church is created. Thus the church is not authoritative of the scriptures, but the scriptures are authoritative of the church. But the scriptures have to point to Jesus and are thus subordinate to him. God as his work in Jesus that is the good news is the pinnacle of this structure that lands church at the bottom. One has to believe in the work of Jesus before they truly believe in the divinity of the scriptures, and thus the church as a gathering of people unified by the Spirit brought together for their same belief that Jesus brought reconciliation.

So how is church supposed to function then? A proclamation of the good news from the scriptures is needed as that is what the church came out of. But what else? Is it necessary to turn up on a Sunday, sit in a pew and have a preacher talk to the people about the 'right' way of doing things. Sing songs and then at the end maybe make a couple friends and go home again? We talk about sending people out into missions, but what about the whole church as sent on missions? Is it required of us to sit in the pews quietly and take in what the preacher says or can we have a discussion about it instead? This comes out of my own personal experiences. I feel that if my faith was a muscle, then all church services are doing on Sunday morning are trying to relax and pacify the muscle while it is being trained how to flex by the preacher. What I hope for is a place where everyones faith muscles are free to flex themselves, where they can own what they do, and we can grow in our own ways, not the preachers ways.

Some thoughts,

Jimmy.

P.S. I'm looking at building a forum over time as a place to discuss this. There are already plenty of places to do this, but I thought I'd give it a go as well.
http://jimmynz.informe.com/forum/theology-f9/ecclesiology-t9.html