What would happen if we closed down every single structured, institutionalised church?  Got rid of our Bishops, clergy, paid lay youth ministers, and started from scratch?
  • I think church would be very culturaly relevant
  • There would be no consumers or passengers in the pew
  • I think we would potentially get a lot more new converts
  • We wouldn't have a prayer book
  • We wouldn't waste money buying million dollar homes for a minister of the Gospel to live in (even if they are a Bishop...)
  • We'd lose all those priests who were in it for some sort of power or status trip
  • I'd lose my job
  • We'd learn to rely on God's provision, rather than our own ability to raise money and balance budgets
  • We'd be risk takers not so risk averse you'd think that God's work in the world would fail if we did something new that didn't work
  • We wouldn't have non-Christians leading Christian things
  • We'd lose some structure that is probably quite helpful on some levels
I'm slowly discovering that I really love not knowing how the future will pan out, and knowing that some ministry that i'm involved in are way too big and hard for me to ever be able to say, I did this.  And knowing that in any moment the whole thing could fall in a heap.

God is soverign and gracious... I vote for more relying on him and more risk taking across the church at large.