Great thought from Frank Viola.
Organic church life is the most glorious experience a Christian can know. But it doesn’t work, it never has worked, and it never will work unless you embrace the cross. [Authentic body life] is a railroad track to the cross.
via Organic Church Life Doesn’t Work . . . « Reimagining Church.
That sentence speaks volumes to the current frenzy among Christians to figure out how to “do church.” Any expression of genuine church life will spring directly from lives integrally joined with Christ through a process to which the cross is central. Why do we attempt to create new wineskins that lend themselves to organic function and growth and then expect God to breath life into them? We are the wineskin in need of having the old wine of selfish ambition squeezed out of us by the loving hands of Father through the work of the cross. Out of that process unique expressions of church will develop natrually that may not look like what we had pre-conceived, nor will they be static as we grow in Him.
David,
Good point about us, Christ’s people, being the wineskin into which the New Life is poured. This new wineskin is not only the individual, a person reborn and remade as a Christ follower, but also the church, several individuals assembled as the body and temple of Christ.