"So the church is vital in God's programme and it should be vital in every Christian's life, our experience of church life.
"It's important for us too to realise that though we're meeting in a theatre here; and we're very relaxed; and we don't have clergy and laity; and we don't have 'priest and people'; and we could look as if we're really rather novel, maybe reactionary, maybe just trying to be relevant to our generation and just do it different, maybe experiment.
"Actually, those are none of the motivations that stir us. We're happy to be here, we're happy to be relevant to our generation, we're certainly wanting to be contemporary to this generation, but our endeavour is to be as Biblical as is at all possible. We want to really take the scriptures [seriously] because we believe that's God's way of building church, that's God's way of touching our generation and fulfilling His purpopse amongst us. So yes, we may look rather different in a place like this, but we are building as far as we know how, seriously from a Biblical base. We're trying to get it right because there we believe God will bless."
This is a quote from a sermon by Terry Virgo at ChristChurch London. You can download it here.
Posts
VIDEO SERMON by Tope Koleoso on Sin
7 hours ago
4 comments:
an excellent quote, and good that we are reminding ourselves of the reason why we do things the way we do. As well as being "relevant" or "different", as competing motivations, I think pragmatism is another big one - churches simply mimicking whatever has been "successful" elsewhere. We need to be clear that the only type of success we seek is that which comes from being obedient to God's word and filled with his Spirit.
I first found this quote flagged up on Adrian's blog. I commented there that I am finding it difficult to get the first sentence to make sense and asked if anyone could help me. So far no-one has replied. Can anyone here help?
Hi charity - I suggest you have a listen to the audio itself: all of the quotes I've extracted are found in the first eight minutes or so, so it wouldn't take you too long. I wonder whether "Our Experience Of Church Life" was a subheading in Terry's notes which he read out at the end of the previous sentence.
Hi Luke
Thanks for your reply. I haven't really got the time or privacy to listen to the audio right now. I was responding to the quote as it appears written down on both on your blog and Adrian's - I assumed that because you both thought this was a brilliant quote you might be able to explain it to me. Never mind and thanks again.
Post a Comment