The following short story is another way to open a discussion among us about what we mean when we say “church”:
Jared & Jenna were able to attend one of the last WIN conferences (World Team Institute of Church Planting) that was held. They learned a great deal about (and experienced) WT values such as community and the gospel. However, they left WIN with a feeling that something was missing. No one had taught them what it meant to do the job that they were being asked to do (i.e., establish communities of believers). To their surprise when they arrived on the field, they experienced some dissonance between what they heard at WIN and the values that were actually being lived out. Again and again, Joel & Jenna probed the team to help them understand what it was they were supposed to be doing with their time. The answers they received were nebulous and confusing at best. They struggled to get a handle on the definition of the “church” and the elements that constituted a “community of believers”. They began to realize that there was no common definition of the church among their co-workers, let alone in WT. As the years past, Joel & Jenna made decisions about what was a church for them. To their surprise, their field director expressed disagreement with their conclusions.
This story is for the most part fictional, but represents some of the struggle I have heard from different members of our WT community around the globe.
How do we begin to describe what we mean by “church” so that it provides a common base for all from which to work and which allows the functions of the church to take appropriate cultural forms where the church is being established?
Filed under: Church, Community, Training | 2 Comments »
