facade of church...

I took a picture of a church last week encased in scaffolding its beauty hidden completely covered by plastic with a print of a church on it. It is just off the A4 on the way out of London; not easy to stop and take the shot - this was taken with my phone hanging out of the window as we shot by at 50mph! (obviously I wasn't driving!).

I suppose the point is that the church didn't want to lose its sense of presence during exterior works. It got me thinking about the facade of church that is seen and rejected by so many.

Ask people what they see of church and what they generally see is self obsession and inaction; a gospel that is merely words to ascent to and not the alternative way of life and of being that Jesus spelled out; any sense of hope destroyed by an impression of a cosmetic one dimensional community bothered exclusively about its self serving needs. Church defined by the songs it sings!

There are those (Mat) in the past who have made a helpful connection with the position the church in general finds itself through the metaphor of exile. While all that was exilic was not necesarily bad, it for me remains helpful. Michael Frost (2006) in Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture uses the metaphor in a different way and sets the scene through a Bruggemann quote.

The danger in exile is to become so preoccupied with self that one cannot step outside oneself to rethink, reimagine and redescribe larger reality. Bruggemann Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles

I guess whatever angle you come at it from - there comes a time to move out from behind the facade, if it is for you a facade and let the reign of God be seen!