http://reasontostand.org/archives/2009/09/15/doing-church Faith strengthened through evidence. Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:39:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://reasontostand.org/archives/2009/09/15/doing-church/comment-page-1#comment-44 Eddie Exposito Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:01:02 +0000 http://reasontostand.org/?p=335#comment-44 I pastor a church in the New Orleans area and have had my views of 'church' radically altered through a post-Katrina landscape. My primary awakening came through seeing that we were not actively seeking to help those in need (prior to the storm). Why did we wait till THIS to act? And I saw many mainline pastors acting like money-grubbing fools and lamenting the fact that they could not, as one SBC pastor actually said to me, "get back to business as usual." I was deeply saddened. And many pastors left town seeking more gainful 'employment' and better surroundings. These things made me sick. Recently, we realized that we wanted to change our weekly study and get more out there instead of being in our building all the time and as a result we've begun to set up four local bible / book discussion/study groups. Since Katrina we've had folks living in our church building as well, so it was funny when you mentioned about L'Abri since we love that approach to life. Currently, we have eight people living at the church's property. We are debt free and have built a 1200 sq ft building next to the existing 5000 sq ft building to be used exclusively for showers, washing clothes, handing food and clothing and connecting the impoverished and disadvantaged with community resources. Our congregation is less than 50 and through hosting hundreds of church members in a few years we've been able to meet and minister to over 2,000 families and individuals in our area. God amazes us. Just wanted to share what's going on with us here and ask you to pray for us as we weed through this. We don't see what we are doing as 'new', but rather an attempt to simply to basics for the sake of better discipleship. I pastor a church in the New Orleans area and have had my views of 'church' radically altered through a post-Katrina landscape. My primary awakening came through seeing that we were not actively seeking to help those in need (prior to the storm). Why did we wait till THIS to act?
And I saw many mainline pastors acting like money-grubbing fools and lamenting the fact that they could not, as one SBC pastor actually said to me, "get back to business as usual." I was deeply saddened. And many pastors left town seeking more gainful 'employment' and better surroundings. These things made me sick.
Recently, we realized that we wanted to change our weekly study and get more out there instead of being in our building all the time and as a result we've begun to set up four local bible / book discussion/study groups. Since Katrina we've had folks living in our church building as well, so it was funny when you mentioned about L'Abri since we love that approach to life. Currently, we have eight people living at the church's property. We are debt free and have built a 1200 sq ft building next to the existing 5000 sq ft building to be used exclusively for showers, washing clothes, handing food and clothing and connecting the impoverished and disadvantaged with community resources.
Our congregation is less than 50 and through hosting hundreds of church members in a few years we've been able to meet and minister to over 2,000 families and individuals in our area. God amazes us.
Just wanted to share what's going on with us here and ask you to pray for us as we weed through this. We don't see what we are doing as 'new', but rather an attempt to simply to basics for the sake of better discipleship.

]]> http://reasontostand.org/archives/2009/09/15/doing-church/comment-page-1#comment-43 Kevin_Martineau Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:59:08 +0000 http://reasontostand.org/?p=335#comment-43 Interesting thoughts! My passion right now is for the church not to just DO church but to BE the church. Church is NOT something we do or something that we attend. We are the church - that is Christians. For me, whether the church meets in homes, restaurants, bought buildings, whatever is not the issue. The issue is: how are we being the bride of Christ . Interesting thoughts! My passion right now is for the church not to just DO church but to BE the church. Church is NOT something we do or something that we attend. We are the church – that is Christians. For me, whether the church meets in homes, restaurants, bought buildings, whatever is not the issue. The issue is: how are we being the bride of Christ .

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