Survivor?

I sometimes wonder whether the Church as an institution will survive. It is all very well saying that is has been around for two thousand years and has done pretty well so far - but is there a place in a modern society for an organisation with....well...so much baggage.

And baggage we have - we have been responsible (at least in part) for crusades, purges and executions. We have, at various times, suppressed huge portions of the population, women, children, and people of various shades and hues - the argument about sexual orientation rages. We are exempt from all sorts of legislation.

There is always lots of talk of the "modern church" but it is a sad fact that the very language - using the word Church is a barrier to many people.

Yet, I do not think people are not hungry for the Christian Gospel. I just think that we are not very good at saying what "being church" means and without clear statement which catches the imagination and stirs into action we are doomed to sit in a slurry of less that comfortable history.

Being Church has little to do with our buildings or which hymns we sing - these things are an outworking of something else - and that something else is where our lives are directed - and that has to be towards Jesus. Relevance, then, comes not in choosing good biscuits for coffee hour but in finding and increasing those places of intersection between the everyday and the sacred.

The Celts had that wonderful phrase Laborare est Orare - to work is to pray - this is being Church in its widest sense - learning to give everything we are and everything that we do over to God - living with a sacred sparkle and doing so in a community which both accepts us as who we are and encourages us to grow into who we might be.

The Fresh Expressions movement which encourages new and innovative ways of being in Christian community and expressing Christian faith is tapping into this whole question of what it is to "be Church" - it might not always be to be in a certain building at a certain time on Sunday morning - it certainly is not to live as if that time on Sunday morning was the "religion slot" and the rest of the week is somehow partitioned off from it rather than brought closer to God by it.

We are in an interesting time - but we will have to learn a lot to stay as Church - I am curious to see how we turn out. Personally I value our ancient doctrine and paths of holiness more than I am appalled by our sometimes inhuman and definitely unChristian behaviour.