It’s not often that I feel hesitant about what I want to say in writing. But as I have been posting the sections of the booklet The Authentic Church, I am only in awe of the images these words evoke. Gordon Cosby and Karla McLung have written about their vision for the church and what might help it to become what it is meant to be in our time.
This segment from Kayla’s Introductory statement:
At the heart of each of us is a driving hunger for ways to five and be in relationship that are genuine. So it is with churches as well. As unique and different as churches are, the ones that are authentic hope to bear a striking and clear resemblance to Jesus, to be so much like Jesus that people sense they have encountered him when they encounter the church. How to facilitate such an encounter-how to become so much like Jesus that our very way of life comforts the world’s brokenhearted and confronts the world’s broken systems-is a key question for all who seek authentic, faithful belonging. If ever there were a time for the church universal to become more truly the body of Christ, to find ways to embody the life and ministry of Christ for the sake of the world, it would be now as violence and despair grow. We desperately need an authentic encounter with Jesus, an encounter that will shake us at our foundations and compel us to become the loving, reconciling people we have been created to be.
The bolded section , which Karla identifies as the key question, is also dear to me, and scary, and constantly nagging at me. Gordon Cosby told me “it sounds like you’ve been ruined”. I told him I often use the word “spolied”. Since 1976, when I am remembering what had been brought close to me via the words of Elizabeth O’Connor, some in-depth discussions with friends who were also struck by this community, and in countless times since then when I “wake up” for a little while and realize that I have slidden back into a “staying afloat in the culture” mode, this community’s journey in being-becoming-renewing church has been a source of calling back to me from the depths.
The most recent years, particularly in the past 4 years, since my “negative” result on a Prostate biopsy, I have returned to what I have and have not accomplished in the way of a more intentional journey to discover, participate, and struggle toward church. A good deal of this has been seemingly fruitless. I am presently trying to figure out who I need to invite to look at this “Authentic Church” with me, and see if this addresses the longings of the heart and also sounds like good news to them.
The bolded section in the quote above is going up in my banner—- it is a significant piece of all this, along with the idea of our being “cultural addicts in recovery”.
