Monday 14th September 2009 Church 3

Cole-Slaw is a blog I found some time ago. Hop across and have a read. Neil Cole is the author and thinker. He is the sort of pioneer of Life Transformation Groups of which I happen to be a fan. We at St Luke's here in down town Frankston "do" LTG's. Although the way we do LTG's is slightly different to Neil's.
We call our LTG's Triple M's. And we mainly meet on a Saturday morning at Macca's for breakfast.
That was not the purpose of this post. Although a little boasting and advertising is good for business.
This: What Do You Mean By Church 3.0 is what I wanted to comment on. I guess what Neil is doing is looking at what it means to do church today and also what it means to be the church.
Why was man created? To be the visible expression of an invisible deity. We are to be the "image" of God. And what is an image? It is a visual expression of something. In our case, that is God. A photo is a visual expression of what you look like imposed on a piece of paper or what ever. It is not you. Only you can be you. And only God can be God and only Christ can be Christ. But, by allowing Christ to live out His life in and through us, we can display His image in the world.
Neil Cole is really exploring in depth what it mean to be Christian. And to be church. Church 1 is the early church. The persecuted church. Church 2 is the institutionalised church. Church post 313 when Constantine decided to make Christianity the state religion. Church 3.0, as I understand Neil's post is a combination of Church 1.0 and 2.0.
Can we have a combination of the two? Yes. As I have commented to Neil, we need both. We need the institutionalised church for corporate worship and as a meeting place for welfare in the community at large.
The church is the place where we meet for solemn assemblies and so on. It can be the place where the public, those out "there" meet us in "here". It the place where we, as a body of people, meet to collectively express our worship and love of God. It is the place where the different small groups, or cell groups, meet to interact and share ideas and resources.
Small groups, or house church's, as I see it, is the place where we are ministered to as individuals. This is the place where people know us, warts and all. Here we share out laughs and hurts and our joy and pain.
LTG's are the accountability place. This is the place where I must account to another for where I am in my Christian walk. Is the sin in my life, have I done my Bible reading. In other words, have I breathed in and out.
That brings me to another thought. We breathe in before we breathe out.
Back on topic. So, as I see it, Church 3.0 is a necessary transition on where we are.
I look forward to more of what Neil has to say. What this space.