Press EN: 01.12.09

With all the "social networking" on the web it is interesting to think that most churches, mega-medium or small, were designed to meet the needs of a specific community. The church is not designed to be a "religious" building that people gather in out of sense of obligation, rather it is designed to thrive within our cities, towns, and neighborhoods to fellowship, to be in relationship, praise and worship to the Triune God. Whether we are at home, at a church building, or the grocer, post-office or on the bus, the church should be reflected in the daily aspects of living life with one another, and giving "Glory to God."

The Filling Station (Gorman)
Within church walls, the church is a great "filling station" where we come to better understand God's word and learn how to apply it beyond the walls of the church building. Within the walls we also fellowship, confess, hold accountable, and meet at the table to receive His bread which represents His body broken for us and the wine or juice to drink of His blood that was shed for us. This is the place where friendship is expressed, where we rejuvenate the mission, the motive, the approach and communicating with the Trinity who models what community is.
The Triune Community
That sense of community and through the mind and the word of God the Father, the approach of Jesus the son, and the unity in prayer and expression of the Holy Spirit, we go beyond the walls to bring the community to our neighbors, families and friends.

The Art of Worship
Art, Music, and Theatre, should play a major role in the community. Communicating and bringing the message and God's word forth through song, visual, and artistic expression is true media-arts worship, as designed by the Father, carried out by the Son, and inspired through the Holy Spirit. It is God's design to bring the gifts and talents as offering to the community as an instrument of saving grace within and outside the walls of a church building. We can express praise and worship through songs to a nursing home, being the church outside of the walls. The same goes through sculpture, drawing, and painting that brings the image of His creation in textured, colorful, works. Through what we write, what we support, photograph, film, or produce we reflect His face to a culture that needs and understands the aesthetics of Grace on paper, in art-forms, or through song. Community and Church are one in the same.
For God's Glory (Grenz)
As Stanley Grenz has expressed in his book, "Theology for the Community of God," the church exists, "For God's Glory." That speaks to where our motive should rest. Yet it is wider than that, it goes to the approach of the verb, "to create." When I teach songwriting I teach that a songwriter should have the "heart of the Psalmist." Now I don't think that composing music to all of the psalms is a worthwhile project, don't imitate the psalmist but take the motivation for communicating with God, in verse and chorus and make it a prayer. The psalmist was tuned into the mind of the Father, the approach and example of the selflessness of the Son, and inspired and compelled by the Spirit." Acknowledging God's Creation process in communicating His purpose is where church and community start.

Heart of the Psalmist (Peterson)
"God claims Earth and everything in it, God claims World and all who live on it. He built it on Oceans foundations, laid it out on River girders. Who can climb Mount God? Who can scale the holy north-face? Only the clean-handed, only the pure-hearted; Men who won't cheat, women who won't seduce."
Psalm 24, The Message
God Reflected through Media-Arts
The church is designed to remind us who God is. If we think we do not need one another for reminders, we need only to look at the book of Genesis, the book of Exodus and the other books of the Pentateuch. Indeed we are so self-absorbed as humans that we need the church to remind us of the goodness and the purposes of our creation. We can "forget our own image after looking in the mirror," without fellowship and community, we easily forget who God is in our lives. Our art, when Biblical reminds us, the teachings, and even the rituals help us to understand without being pious or legalistic who the Triune God is and expressed throughout the community that we call the Church.
The Body
For us it is the newspaper delivered at our doorstep that reflects His love, it is the website where we discuss His attributes and a life saved, the church could be, the song I shared with my neighbor this morning, or the broad, stream and pod cast my production director put on the satellite, FTP or website. The church is close and far, it is a big Body, encompassing bookstores, galleries and coffeehouses. It is a community willing to touch a culture through discussing a film or a play. The church is also academia when studying the sciences or the arts, when the purpose is to glorify and communicate His creation, there is the church.