A few more thoughts on "church"

As I've previously mentioned a few times, I've been going through a process of rethinking many things for quite some time, including "church." I've found it wonderful that many of us are going through similar processes, and it's been great that we've been able to encourage one another and build one another up!

Here are some more thoughts from others about "church" that I've come across recently.

Aida has mentioned Darin Hufford, and she has a link to his MySpace on her blog. Through that link, I read some of his blog posts, including this one, entitled "The Church that Christ built." In this post he brings up some things that I have thought about from time to time, and he really brings some more substance to my thoughts and puts them together much more coherently.

Let me just quote a small part of his post that I'm referring to. This gives the gist of what he goes on to talk about, and if you want you can go read the rest. It gets much deeper than this.

I can recall studying the "5 fold ministry" while in Bible collage. At the time we were taught that those five ingredients are what make up the Church. Where Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers are functioning together; there is Church.

Rather than understand that particular verse to mean that these things will exist in the Body of Christ world wide, we have foolishly interpreted it to mean they must exist "underneath one roof".

Have you ever thought that way? I know I have, even if not exactly in the way describe above. I thought, for example, that a church had to have a pastor, elders, a "worship team," committees, and so on and so on, in order to have a true "church." The "5 fold ministry" that Darin speaks about is derived from Eph 4:11-14 (and beyond).

"And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ..."

As Darin states, many churches feel that all five of these must be operating under one roof, or in in any one ministry. But he suggests... are not all these things operating throughout the worldwide church, rather than having to have at least one of each in any individual gathering of believers?

And I think it's the same with all kinds of gifts and works of the Holy Spirit in and through His people all around the world. For example, some people have a true, genuine focus on feeding the poor. Does each and every gathering of people need to have this same focus? Some people are gifted teachers. Can a body of believers be edified without a gifted teacher? I have been taught many times by people who are not gifted teachers!!! Does there have to be a pastor?! Does there have to be music? (See my next post).

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many. (1 Cor 12:12-14)

Are all the "body parts" to be found in each and every local gathering of believers?