Jos 22:22-27a "The LORD alone is God! The LORD alone is God! We have not built the altar in rebellion against the LORD. If we have done so, do not spare our lives this day. But the LORD knows, and let all Israel know, too, that we have not built an altar for ourselves to turn away from the LORD. Nor will we use it for our burnt offerings or grain offerings or peace offerings. If we have built it for this purpose, may the LORD himself punish us. "We have built this altar because we fear that in the future your descendants will say to ours, 'What right do you have to worship the LORD, the God of Israel? The LORD has placed the Jordan River as a barrier between our people and your people. You have no claim to the LORD.' And your descendants may make our descendants stop worshiping the LORD. So we decided to build the altar, not for burnt sacrifices, but as a memorial. It will remind our descendants and your descendants that we, too, have the right to worship the LORD.
i came across this scripture and it reminded me of the relationship between the existing church and the emerging church. there seems to be a great deal of fear from the church about what will emerge, and in some places there are church leaders doing everything they can to keep new communities from emerging. there are some places where people are encouraged to experiment, but it seems that for the most part, there is little belief in even those wishing to pioneer, that anything will be able to emerge from what already exists. among some of the emergent leadership there is the thought that the emerging will probably be most successful if not initially connected to an existing church. i remember tony jones saying that he didn't know of any emerging church that had emerged from an existing church, and those that had tried, were cut off in one way or another. i told him that if apes can propagate in captivity, maybe there is the possibility that something could truly emerge from the existing church. over the past two years, i think i may have been swayed to his side of the aisle.
when there are emerging churches and communities already being written off by the modern church, will we have to worry about being invited in later? the three tribes that had to go to the other side of the river worried they would be cut off by later generations. do we have to worry about this? if we travel across the river away from the whole and start something new, do we need to build a memorial altar so that later down the road we can prove we aren't illegitimate? or will it be like the reformation and will we be the protestants that separate and choose to never look back and not worry about whether we are still "one body"? will we be like most protestants and evangelicals that look at the catholics and question their salvation?
the people in the scripture explaim "the Lord alone is God!", the Lord our God is one God. and i believe that the church is one body...the division that already exists is sometimes almost too much for me to bear. but i know that sometimes tribes must go across the river. i know we must go across the river. so lets build an altar, a memorial, a symbol to stand for all time so that the divide between the emerging and the existing never becomes like the divide between the existing and the catholic. and may all know that we don't build this memorial as an altar or a shrine that we would worship the change we pioneer, but as a symbol that we too worship the same Jesus, the same God that has created us all, that was born to Mary, suffered unter Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, rose on the third day and sitteth at the right hand of the Father almighty.
gregg
m740k
Posted by: ro637ck | July 05, 2007 at 11:32 PM