Have you ever watched a skilled weaver design and make a beautiful tapestry? I haven’t seen it often but I once watched a documentary on it and it was amazing. The skill it takes to see random threads and make a beautiful piece of art out of them is huge. The thing is, the tapestry often doesn’t look beautiful until well into the process. For a long while it looks, well, quite disturbing at times.Yet the artist is always in control of what the final product will look like and one thing is certain, the final product will be fantastic.
The Church
I’ve just started reading a book called ‘The reason for God’ by Tim Keller and it has got me thinking once again about church. It is fairly widely commented that the church is going through a second reformation of sorts, or if people don’t believe it already is then they often believe that it needs to! For about the last 100 years or so many people both within the church and outside it have expected ‘religion’ to die. However this has not occurred. Instead, as Keller points out, “We [now] have neither the western Christendom of the past nor the secular, religionless society that was predicted for the future. We have something else entirely.” So what is this something else?
God’s tapestry
There is not much that I am certain of in this world but one thing I draw hope from is my certainty that God is weaving a beautiful tapestry that is perfect for the times that the church today finds itself in. As happened during the first reformation there is much debate between the different ‘camps’ as to what this new, or different church might look like. There is great debate about who is right, who is wrong. There is great debate about how much of the old and how much of the new is needed. What if the answer to all the debate is simply ‘yes’?
The old and the new
Though the church today is very different thanks to the reformation and all that followed, one thing that is clear is that there were still definitely many parts of the old that carried through to the new. Though there is little debate that some of the current methods of church will be a part of whatever God is forming, just how much is usually the issue. What also amuses me is how almost all people discussing this argue that the way of the bible is the way we should go…which I don’t debate, it’s just the many varied interpretations of what that means that amuses me! So will house churches become the norm? Maybe it’ll be the megachurch that wins out? Perhaps those ‘sticklers’ hanging on to the old orthodox and traditional styles that will ‘win’ the so called battle. Or perhaps God is simply saying ‘yes’?
The Dream
I’ve long been interested in these discussions about the church. This has often strained me though because I don’t tend to fit nicely in any one camp. I listen to people talking about the emerging church and how it is shaping the world. This get’s me excited and I want to be more like that. Then I read about the persecuted churches and how they are taking off in the developing world under extreme difficulty and this makes me feel like praying for the Western church to be more persecuted! Then of course I have the positive experiences of the larger style churches that I have both been in and regularly read about. How much time do we spend arguing whose thread is the one God either should be, or is, using? What if all the threads are both being used…and being fixed to best fit the tapestry that God is weaving? I don’t doubt for one minute that a lot that is done in the name of the church makes me cringe and cry…but then I read some of the stuff that Martin Luther talked about and I realise that he too was a little rough around the edges and didn’t have it perfect!
My place
I’m not entirely sure where I am going with this other than to reflect on something I have believed for a number of years, my position in all this is to straddle the middle between the many different strands of ‘church’ that God is weaving into his masterpiece. I don’t quite know how this looks, I don’t yet quite know exactly what my role is but every day, more and more God refines in me a heart to see the big, the small, the rich, the poor working together to allow God to make the tapestry that he desires the world to see. And though at times I wonder if the masterpiece is ever coming together I just have to remember that even the best weaver starts with something that looks less like a masterpiece and more like something destined for the trash! What a journey this is God has me on.
