Tuesday 3 November 2009

The role of the local church?

What, in your opinion, is the role of the local church?


The Church’s role has to be one which embraces a growing desire to make disciples not just converts, through its’ peoples’ own spiritual mentoring/direction process that they undertake; this desire naturally passes on to other followers. ‘Spiritual mentoring is different from pastoral care for it goes beyond the needs of the present moment and deals with the bigger picture of life direction and purpose….its concerned with growing the soul.’ 
It deals with the whole of the picture, the whole person and their walk with God. This concern goes beyond normal church activities and attendance. There is a genuine desire to build a movement and not a monument.


The local Church must be at home in tension, the scriptures are filled with it, yet we try to resolve and pacify people making the message, which is us, sterile. When we view words like ‘grace and faith, belief and action, spoken and living words, head and heart’ all create this dichotomy that we try to resolve. The 21st century Church needs to be able to take people through this tension rather than through a program which will sterilize them. This tension enables the transformation of Christ in us.

This Missional response further extends our own and the teams understanding. The passion we have for engaging with people and our belief that we can make a different grows. As we begin to face issues of fairness, justice and equality that invade our world we cannot help but care; what we do matters. This dynamic process brings us together in the revelation of who God is and what we are called to do. It affects our theology making it practical and not just word based. Our theology must make us get our hands dirty in the works of kingdom

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