The Relational Church

At our officer’s meeting last night, our campus pastor Bart Moseman challenged the officers to seize the opportunity that God has given us through the destruction of the building to “be the church.”

Having started our campus ministry, Reformed University Fellowship, from scratch Bart has never had an “RUF building.” Rather than becoming discouraged over this fact, Bart has taken what God has given him as an opportunity to “go to where the students are.” So he meets with them in dorm rooms and frat houses for Bible studies. They gather in the student union and meeting rooms all across campus. And rather than focusing on “a place” they focus on Christ and one another. Though very strong on the Word and teaching, by necessity and now by design RUF UNL is a relationally driven, dynamic ministry.

To Bart’s way of thinking, having a building could easily distract him from doing ministry. The presence of a building does not mean that ministry is taking place (go look at all the empty cathedrals in Europe!)

This is our opportunity: it is going to be a while before we have a Zion church building. Let’s seize the moment to be what we should be even with a building: a relationally driven, dynamic body of believers who are
focused on prayer, fellowship, and breaking bread from “house to house” (see Acts 2).

At the AFC2 BBQ on Saturday night, we discussed strategies to stay tethered to one another and to see that people don’t drift off during this time. One of the ideas we discussed was home fellowship groups. If you would like to host or be a part of a small home fellowship group (maybe 3 to 4 families and singles) please e-mail me (jd at keatinglaw dot com) asap. If you are willing to coordinate this effort, e-mail me as well.

Let’s take the opportunity God has given us to “be the church.”

Blessings,

Jeff Downing

Posted on June 21, 2007.