Neil Cole, Organic Church (via HouseChurchBlog):

When you imagine the amount of resources, energy and time invested in a service held only one day a week, it is remarkable. With all the importance placed on this event, you would expect there to be a lot of scriptural directives to make sure people get it right. But if you search all of the New Testament looking for the commands or injunctions having to do with this important weekly event, you will find them sadly missing. Instead you will find verses, chapters, and entire books that speak to how we are to live together as a spiritual family.

We’ve been away from the institutional church for a couple months now, and I don’t miss it at all. We’ve attended church three times in that span, twice at one place and once at another. I’m not sure if we’ll end up a part of an institutional church any time in the near future or not. It’s still up in the air.

For all of 2005 I was neck-deep fighting against the institutional momentum of a church and way too close to the situation to write about it clearly. And for the past several weeks I’ve been detoxing and sorting out my thoughts. Fasting from institutional church and being more intentional about my spiritual development and (especially) the spiritual development of the kids. Maybe that’s what I’m doing for Lent this year and didn’t even realize it.

So now my thinking about it all has started to crystallize and seem a little more coherent (to myself, anyway). So I’ll be doing some writing around that topic (the institutional church) over the next little while. I thought this quote from Cole would be an appropriate kick-start.