Since we’ve been in Washington, DC we’ve landed in a pretty cool church…

National Community Church is a great emergent church (at least I think it is, I am still not sure what the definition is exactly) that started about 11 years ago in a school gym. When the school failed to pas fire codes they moved their Sunday meetings to a movie theater that they rented for the morning.

Last year they moved their office space to a newly constructed coffeeshop just block from Union Station. They now have 3 locations around the city with a new location opening a month from now in Georgetown. Right now, I am writing from the coffee shop where they are showing 5 different NFL games to draw people to the location to advertise the shop as well as the church.

I don’t want to come across like the only good thing about the church is the cool locations… they have been great at bringing the Word, too. The series that we’re in right now is called The Elephant in the Church, we’re talking about things that are prevalent in the (American) Church on the whole that just don’t get talked about. The first week was the grey elephant – legalism and relative morality; Pastor Mark came at it from both angles of the dangers of making things that are black and white in the Scriptures into gray areas and the other way around, taking things that God has not made specific proclamations about – like alcohol (or eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols). Last week was the fake elephant, hypocrisy. This week, the circus elephant in which we addressed the consumerism mentality in the church wherein many people come to church to get something out of it for themselves rather than contributing to the community.

The only thing that I wanted to say about the service was something that Heather Zempel said from the front – that originally the purpose of the church meeting was to celebrate communion as well as to gather as a community. Well, we are gathering as a community, but I still don’t understand why it is that so many churches neglect to celebrate communion, or the Lord’s Supper or whatever you want to call it. I always hear the, “well, it will start to mean less if we do it every week.” But, the thing is, Jesus wasn’t concerned about whether or not we’d forget to hold in in reverence what it was about… as a matter of fact it’s intended to be something that is done every time we gather, not just when we’re together on Sunday. I think every time I have a group of Christians together for a meal at my house I’m going to have a small loaf of bread to split and do that with; the more I ponder it, the more I think that’s as much if not more of an accurate/faithful taking of the meaning.

Anyhow, I like the church and I’m happy where we are!

By the way, the Steelers won!

Tagged as: faith, Friends