“How many churches are there in Guelph?”
My good friend, Dan Matwey, reminded me of this question I asked him and a group of Alpha graduates some years ago now.
“We were wondering if there were 10 or 15 (there are actually +55 church buildings) and you shocked us when you told us there was just one!” Dan recounted.
Jesus has 1 church here in Guelph spread out over a number of congregations, denominations and assorted groupings. It is a messy theological job if we look at it any other way. (How many heads are there?). This should allow us to relate more broadly than our particular gathering without ‘being disloyal’. It should allow us to choose, contribute and participate in a wide range of groupings without expecting one particular congregation have to offer a full set of programmes for all age groups with the congregation down the street doing the same.
Let’s admit that it is really a pragmatic decision when we insist that all offerings, all time commitment, all learning expectations must go through one single local congregational hierarchy. That may be great for our accounting but I don’t think we can make a biblical case for it.
What can we begin to do together because we are 1 church? How can we support each other? How can we build synergy? How can we reduce the number of overlapped programmes and more strategically deploy labourers? How can we respect or differences? How can we strategically depploy resources so we are not investing large sums in buildings that are underutilized? How can we network more?