Transformed Churches

What kind of church is a Barnabus Church – an Antioch-like church, where there is multi-cultural leadership and communal expression, where there is teaching in word and deed, where there is missional cutting edge expression that realizes we are no longer in Kansas (er, Jerusalem) anymore, with temple and rituals and places loved and familiar to us, and that realizes we are on the frontier, on the edge of new and emerging needs, expressions, opportunities and challenges – unprecedented in some ways but very much like the kinds of experiences and opportunities and challenges God’s called out ones have always been led to face and to experience – where they are off-balance because of the new circumstances but trusting and leaning hard into the ever-Present Saviour.

Wouldn’t we like to get back to a visit to Antioch (?) – to meet Barnabus, to see and experience the cultural diversity and creative leadership that both builds up a church and released God’s people for their Holy Spirited, creaturely tasks, in the finding and fleshing out of full humanity – Life as God intended it for people, places and things when He set up all creation (and which He is restoring in and through us, and through His Church, by our becoming new creations – forerunners of the NEW CREATION.

We groan till it all gets done, or comes fully to us – this new creation (as Jesus will bring it fully at the end of the age) and, as St. Paul writes the Spirit groans with us – in inarticulate (to us but not to God) prayer that encourages, sustains and links us with the Trinity and to God’s ultimate purposes in Heaven and on earth.

If we can’t literally get back to Antioch, can we still find – can we become Barnabus-like people (leaders like Jesus and followers of Jesus) in-Antioch-like (Barnabus) churches, encouraging, building-up and reaching out – going out so as to transform lives of those around us? If the same Spirit of Jesus indwells us, isn’t it possible that we can find and become and be God’s people, cutting-edge and faithful and missional in this-here day, in these-here communities, for times such as these?!

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