A person reads an ad in the newpaper about a church that offers the full meal of Christ in their services. By meal, I mean it's promised to be filling and satisfiying in every way. To meet all their needs. They arrive and are greeted in a friendly manner, taken to a place where they see slides advertising the meal, and they hear people talk about the meal, then we powerpoint the meal and send them on their way. Unfulfilled, still hungry for the real thing. Another analogy would be the wine and wineskin. We have great looking skins, ornate in their appearance and beautiful to the eye, but the wine inside is not sweet and does not taste as wine should. And people know when it doesn't. Is the wine in the Church the true wine of Jesus.
All the things in the Bible are important, but we would agree that the things that Jesus said are most important. He boiled all the commandments and the law down to loving God and loving others. Then He gave us a single command, in the spirit of the Shamah, whatever you are doing, wherever you are going, make disciples. This is the irreducible core of the faith. You can do more than this and follow Jesus, but not less. Our churches can vary the wineskin. But this is the wine. It has to be there.
Thoughts?
Reference: Howard Snyder: The Problem of Wineskins, Church Structure in a Technological Age
