So what

A healthy church is a veritable Gordian knot of intertwining relationships that easily expands to introduce new strands...so what? Couldn't that just be the way any healthy organization looks? Why discuss the church specifically?

The church differs from other social institutions in one important respect: it is established by God. The church is the goal of creation. Our purpose on Earth is to know God and to enter into relationship with him. God created each member of the church with specific abilities and gifts and called them into the church. The formation of Christian community is therefore both one of the tools God uses to call us into relationship with him, and the goal of that calling. We are not islands separated form each other in our relationships with God. As a church we form what Augustine refered to as the City of God.

What is this? The death and ressurection of Christ and the commision of the Spirit of God established an outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth--the church. We are therefore the emmisaries of Christ, and the church is to be the model of true human relationship. It is, along with the Bible and the Spirit our key to forming relationship with God.

So then if our goal is to know God and enter into relationship with him how do we do that and how does the church fit in? I think that relationship with God is not so different from relationship with other human beings as we would suppose, though there are differences due to our complete unworthiness.

When I walk into a new church I don't walk up to the pastor and begin to talk to him expecting to enter into relationship with him. Why not? He is above me, more important in the church and probably a very busy man. I am merely a passerby. Out of respect for his higher position, I wait for him to seek relationship with me. This is natural in human relationship not just in church but in all human activity. The new hire doesn't expect the company president to want to talk to him and the average voter doesn't expect the President to want to talk to him. Position is an instinctive calculation for all of us when we seek out relationships, even if putting itt his way seems repugnant.

These are models for our relationship with God with a few important provisions. First, he is so far above us as to be incompareable to us, and second we have renounced every claim on relationship with him. We have no right to form a relationship with him.

But, the great thing is, he seeks out relationship with us, and calls us into the church to enter into communion with him. And he continually calls us into deeper relationship. The difficulty is that in this relationship, invitations to a deeper relationship are not as directly perceivable as in human relationship. But the parallels are there. We enter into relationship with God at his invitation--this is the beauty of the gospel.

Thus the importance of the church. Along with the Bible and the Holy Spirit, it is one of the avenues of relationship with God. The church was created to showcase human relationship and human-divine relationship. The point of the Gordian knot is to strengthen and enliven the bonds which link us to God and through encouragement and intervention to sustain us in that relationship.