"The Perfect Church for Imperfect People"

“What if we became the perfect church for imperfect people, the church of unfinished theologies” - Donna Schaper, Still speaking Devotional: June 29, 2013

I loved this quote when I first read it more than a year ago, and I still do! Just imagine what it would be like if the institutional church as we know it today, became a church of unfinished theologies instead of a church that knows all the answers. What if it was open to changes, to growing, to experimenting, to trying out new ways of doing things and expressing ideas…. The possibilities are endless, for success as well as failures, for growth as well as dead-ends, for learning about ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Of course the phrase ‘unfinished theologies’ also implies that they will never be finished and what a wonderful thing that would be: to continue to explore, to wonder, and to imagine just how the ‘Mystery’ can be comprehended.

As well, we need to give up the idea that in order to be part of the church, we need to be perfect . . . . or conversely that all others within a congregation are perfect. Church would become that place where we accept each other and ourselves with all our warts and foibles, seen and unseen.

But then we also heard this from the author of Luke at around 80 CE.

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." - Luke 9:24

This doesn’t sound to me as a verse that advocates safety, security, and right answers. Rather it suggests to me taking risks, and being willing to go down the wrong road, to take a path that is different from the one ‘well-trodden’. It is only in the risk, in the exploration, that we will live the life that we are inspired to live. For it is only through risks, through pursuing those unfinished theologies, that we will lose our life as we now know it.

What part are we each called to play in making our church the perfect church for ‘imperfect people’ and ‘unfinished theologies’?

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