Is Less Church More Church?

Is less church more church? Is one of the greatest drawbacks to church-as-we-know-it that it can consume our schedules in such a way as to cripple our ability to actually be the church, the presence of Christ in the world. Have we promoted the myth that serving God means volunteering at the church - ushering, teaching, chaperoning, or sitting in committee meetings? Have you ever felt guilty about not being "involved" enough at the church? I wonder if being the church means something more than volunteering at the church. What might it look like for churches to invite their people to fewer meetings and fewer programs while encouraging them to invest more time in their neighborhoods, in their schools, with their friends, in the community? What impact might we have if we understood that time to be sacred and our role to be missionary? What might it do to our perception and practice of what it means to follow Jesus if we believed that we don't have to extract ourselves from the "normal" places of our daily lives (work, neighborhood, teams, gym, coffee shop, bar, restaurants, etc...) in order to serve God? What if God has actually placed us strategically to live into and manifest His kingdom right where we are? Could churches be about our gathering to celebrate what God is doing daily in and and through our lives and then scattering to discover more and join in where God is at work around us? What if churches trained us to see ourselves as we are, missionaries of everyday life? Could CityWell churches follow the pattern of God's calling of Abraham who was blessed to be a blessing? Could we understand ourselves as gathered to be scattered?