I have been thinking about how the Church should really look and act and I can say I am at a loss on the experiential level. As my community of faith has mobilized over the last several months to become part of a house church movement, much of what I think God has intended for us we have only approximated at best. Coming from a good, pagan family that never went to church (in East Tennessee, mind you), I can remember the freshness of discovering the Church at age 15 when I finally converted. By the grace of God, he placed me in the middle of a loving and nurturing people. (They had to be.......the first sermon I ever preached was when I was 15 on Youth Sunday...............I whupped out the back-masked copies of AC/DC and Judas Priest and sprung a one-and-a-half-hour sermon on the dangers of Satanism and rock music. Thousands were added to the fold that day). Despite every obvious reason not to, they hung with me and saw something God was doing in me that needed nurturing and clarification.

So here we go headlong into the world of house churches and we don't really know how to do it. But you know- that feels really good. It reeks of being right. God knows how to take a raw and pulpy mass and fashion something beautiful out of it. I am ready to slay the old habits of maintenance-level Xanity and get out of the way for God. I am weary of trying to be "cutting edge" and I am tired of worn out terminology that sometimes only succeeds in semantics what I want to see in practice. I want to see God do what I cannot do and stop acting like the church depended on me........and I need perspective as I demythologize.