In Cleveland OH the conventional wisdom is that half the churches in the city will close up in the next year. There is a glut of Church buildings on the real estate market. Churches that took on a huge building program a few years ago are staggering under the debt load with flat or declining contributions. Some Churches are stalled in building programs.
What is going on?
I believe that the Lord is driving Christians out of their enclaves. He isn't going to let them come back until they figure out what Church really is. It's not a building. It's an assembling. An Ecclesia.
This may mean we end up in homes, in cheap rented space, in basements. We are about to go thru a change.
This is not Judgment any more than the diaspora was Judgment. OK, it was at one level. But the persecutions and dispersing of people in the first century caused the worship of Jesus to fill the earth. Had Christians stayed in Jerusalem Christianity would have never taken the world.
It's time again. Jesus is once again driving us out. Time to go.
Don't mourn for the former things. Embrace the change. Don't get me wrong. I love the Church, I love it for what it once was, I love the music, the preaching, the congregation.
Maybe we developed a practical idolatry of it all.
God's promise is anything that gets in the way of HIM in love will be taken from us. I think many of us LOVE the church and it's traditions more than HIM.
So, He drives us out. On the streets.. The highways and byways. Maybe that's where he wants us to be. Maybe? Time to GO ye therefore.
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