At its heart, this site is about two guys wanting to see the body of Christ (i.e., the Church) transformed into a greater likeness of Christ. We love the Church. We are a part of the Church – not above it, not outside of it. All followers of Christ are on this journey together – a journey that starts with Christ, and remains in Him eternally.
That said, there are a few things that will help you to understand us, and this site. Think of it as a mini ‘credo’ of “The Church You Know.” That credo goes something like this:
1. Our Purpose
We intend to stimulate, to question, and to provoke – hopefully in love – the Church, because we love the Church. This love compels us to question some of the characteristics and practices we see in much of the institutional church. At the end of the day, we are trying our best to be faithful to what God has put in our hearts, and respond to the journey that he has us on as it relates to the Church, His body. We’re quite sure that even with the best of our intentions, we’ll probably mess that up somewhere along the way. We do not claim to have a monopoly on what is best/right/perfect for the Church, and we have no illusions about starting some website that will change the entire body of Christ through its unique insight and divine revelation. If anything, we reserve the right to be wrong about things, overly zealous about issues that may not matter all that much in the long run, and foolhardy in the way that we communicate. It should not surprise anyone that we, and the Church that we are all a part of – always have been and will be in need of God’s mercy, wisdom, and redemption. We don’t say this to water-down what we are trying to communicate, or to provide us with a convenient cover for backing out from a controversial issues; we say this to provide the appropriate perspective for the website. With that said, we are genuinely frustrated and concerned by the issues we address and pray that each of them will become less a part of the Church you know.
2. Our Goal
We are not really promoting a specific church structure or model (house church, simple church etc.). Our passion is to see people come into the freedom, joy and peace of intimate relationship with Jesus and fellow members of His Body. We realize this can happen within literally any of the structures or systems found under the umbrella of Christendom. At the same time, we believe most of the systems and structures create stumbling blocks to this goal of relationship with Christ and His Body – and these are what we hope to draw attention to. This puts us at an advantage and a disadvantage. It is an advantage because we do not have a single model that we are trying to advocate, or a single position that can either be accepted or rejected as a single paradigm. The only real thing we will stick to consistently is that we are all in need of relationship with Christ and His Body. It is also a disadvantage though, because at some level, it leaves us vulnerable to merely looking like a virtual peanut gallery, always cynically lamenting something or other, but never really doing anything about it. It is certainly much easier to point out things that are wrong with any given system than it is to beat the path to a better way – but again, we really can’t say that we will always be trying to do that, because we don’t have all the answers. We can identify problems galore, but the only real solution we have to offer is Jesus. Although that is a simple solution, we (the Church) have certainly managed to complicate that over the millennium.
3. Our Definitions
“The Church” or “The Body” – by this we mean the ‘universal’ Church, the body of Christ, all those who have relationship with Christ as their savior around the world.
“Local church” – a group of people you share fellowship with. Could be on Sunday. Could be traditional, informal, funny, smelly or boring.
“Institutional church” or “Institutional Christianity” – formal organizations or denominations that are Christian, and have some level of centralized structure that creates uniformity of belief, worship practices, or financial support and obligation.
“Traditional church” – Sunday morning, senior pastors, three worship songs, one sermon, pass the offering tray, “thanks for coming see you next week” kind of church.
4. Our Audience
If you are employed by an institutional or traditional church (see above) – you will probably be the most at risk for being offended by this site. This is because most of this site is our critique on systems and practices that we believe can sometimes get in the way of relationship with Christ. Of anyone, you have probably invested the most personally and professionally in creating, operating, or defending these systems. Although it may be hard to understand, we really aren’t fundamentally criticizing you, but the systems and practices. Okay, sometimes we will be criticizing you specifically. But realize that although we make certain generalizations about ‘types’ of people in ministry, we certainly don’t assume much about you personally, or question the desire of your heart to honor and serve God. We believe you can, and probably are doing just that – as we hope we are too. But we also hope that we can respond more clearly to God’s calling for us, and help you do the same through these questions and conversations.
5. Our Humor
We love humor, and we have a very ‘distinct’ type of humor – that probably is not understood or received by everyone (and by everyone, we mean, ‘stupid, humorless people.’) That’s okay (and by okay, we mean ‘unfortunate for those stupid humorless people.’) We realize that sometimes our humor may be raw, or offensive, or absolutely awesome – and as such, that some people will love it, and some will hate it.
6. Our History
We have both, at some point or another, been heavily involved in ‘church ministry’ – whether as a paid job or volunteer for a traditional church. You could say we’ve been ‘really involved’ in ministry before, although there are certainly people out there that have a much longer history with institutional churches. Our experiences in local churches really cover much of the range of what people commonly refer to as ‘Christendom’ – including highly traditional & liturgical Protestant denominations, community churches, charismatic/Pentecostal churches, house churches, and informal church communities that lack any formal ‘church’ meeting – essentially connections of friends in Christ that live life together in a meaningful way. We’ve never been Catholic, so we’re at a disadvantage of experience there. Maybe. But in everything else, our critique and questioning comes from at least some basis in personal experience.
7. Our 'Right' vs. Your 'Right'
Many of these issues involve the ‘form’ of how something is done in the Church live. With many of these ‘forms’ – (a service, the way one worships, etc.) we can totally disagree with you, but not be accusing you of being ‘wrong.’ We may both be wrong. We may both be right. There may not even be a wrong or right, depending on the subject. Don’t be offended if we disagree, or set out thinking that you must get us to agree with you. We believe there is value in the discussion if nothing else, and therein lies the best chance of all of us coming to a stronger, closer relationship with Jesus.
8. Our Love
We’ve got love, lot’s of it. We said it before, but it’s worth saying again: our entire motivation is a sincere, passionate love for the Church. We firmly believe that without love, we really are a “clanging symbol or resounding gong.” We’ve checked our motivations more than once, and constantly are brought back to our genuine love for the Church. So if you see something other than love coming through in what we say throughout this site, please let us know, lovingly of course.
