churches

not the church, but church buildings.
i got talking to some guys at cornhill the other day and we thought about how most modern churches are hanging onto a gothic/catholic style of building. and now people are thinking that there's something in that. you need sandstone to meet with God.

i guess there was a public forum. they had synagogues back in the day. in acts 20:20 paul talks about his ministry being in public and from house to house; large and small-scale.
someone said that churches that meet in schools are probably closest to what the original church was.
and it's the convenience of having your own building that drives people.
convenience over the congregation's concepts of 'church' being accurate.

but really, it is the people.
and i thought it'd be cool to gather in a different place every week.
whenever i read about Israel coming together in the old testament it sounds exciting and like something's about to happen. there's expectancy and intentionality.
but church feels like a tired show. if it was a casually created social group, everyone would have jumped ship years ago when it got stale.
Israel assembling never feels stale when you read it.
and people say "yeah but if you changed the location every week people couldn't make it depending on where they were coming from"
but this is what's backwards about church - we're meant to be dedicated to meeting the people there each week (i could say a lot here about 'performance v family' but that's for another time).

just think of the thrill if the church leaders called an emergency meeting at 10pm on a tuesday night and everyone came out from their houses and everyone would be buzzing and excited to see what would happen and why we were all there together. together. there'd be that sense that we were sharing this together. i want that feeling every sunday.
yeah, so there are no answers here, only thoughts - but that's just the nature of the game.