For a while now I've been working 60-70 hours each week. It can be a struggle, but I'm grateful to God for the job.
Working this many hours has placed very significant time constraints on both me and my family. We simply don't have time to do much more than what each day requires. This has forced me to prioritize what is most important.
Related to church life, all I really care about any more is getting together with friends. I don't get to do this too often; therefore, whenever it happens it is special. I don't care so much what happens specifically when we get together. I'm just happy to be together. It's a thrill to simply be with brothers and sisters in Christ.
Talking (and usually eating) with Christian friends is what's important in church life. That's, of course, not all that matters, but it does take priority when time is at minimum.
4 comments:
Eric,
Interesting post. The longer I've been involved with house church type groups, the less I want to engage in the more standard meetings and the more I want to do just what you mentioned; hang out with other Christians, talk about life over a meal or beer. Do you think a structured house church meeting is a half way point to the more long term natural experience of living life with other Christians?
Seth
Seth,
Thanks for commenting. The structured house church meeting is an interesting issue. I certainly believe it is to be preferred over typical worship services, but it too can devolve into a sort of repeated pseudo-ceremony. What may be best is for believers to spend lots of unstructured time together, while occasionally doing things that are more structured. I don't really know. My hope is that most Christians have ample opportunity to simply hang out together.
How do you usually meet/gather with other Christians?
Yeah I could agree with your idea on that. Most of the best growth I've had in life is through the few rare periods of spending unstructured time with other believers over a longer time frame(weeks, months, years). The repeated pseudo-ceremony is just stuffing institutional church into a house I think. However, the one big exception I keep coming back to, is hearing the bible read out loud. I think that's super important and very powerful. If that's done in a structured meeting, I'm inclined to go just for that and put up with all the rest that I don't care for.
Right now I connect with Christians where-ever I can, but don't have a long term group I'm a part of
Seth,
I'm glad that God's desire is simply that we meet with other believers. He doesn't seem too concerned about there being any sort of structure. If you are growing and helping others grow, then my guess is that God is pleased.
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