church without walls

this phrase came up at our preaching team meeting this week, and has stuck in my head. It says a lot to me:


  • who said a church should have walls anyway? In the NT, the church is always the people, not the building. If we start getting too pre-occupied by the "hardware" of our church (how many chairs do we need to put out? do we need a new amp for the music group? why can't the powerpoint team put the right words up for the song? etc.) we have lost sight of what we ought to be about.
  • a lack of walls, real or metaphorical, means that the boundaries cease to exist, and the "in or out" debate stops being relevant. 
  • I like the image of the church seeping out all around the edges, like a bright red T-shirt put into a white wash by mistake- everything else starts to turn pink :) So we should be colouring our world with truth, grace, justice, forgiveness...

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