A Church That Is

Having said that Radix Fidem is no church, I’d be lying if I said there was no church here. Jesus pointedly said that, even where so few as two or three come together in His name, He is there. He is manifested wherever people commune in His power. We are His body.

You can call it what you like; I’m not going to give this de facto church a name. It is simply a spiritual family of people who genuinely consider each other brothers and sisters. I could list some names, but the reality is this family is whomever, at any given time, senses the power of agape from that interaction.

Should it seem odd to anyone that people who have never seen each other could sense a genuine bond of affection? Yet it is there. If you draw strength from that, if your faith grows because of the interaction, then it is a church for you at that moment. But where it begins to matter is when that interaction continues, when you sense the need to keep coming back for more.

You folks are my spiritual family. Whether or not we can point to any other communion in meat space or another virtual communion to which we belong is immaterial. In terms of the Spirit Realm, there is a very real church that meets here in this virtual space, a church that I address through this blog. You decide whether that includes you, but if you invest the energy it takes to talk with me, and each other, then this is a church.

When Jay and I first established our forum, the idea was to provide a virtual space where this church could interact as peers. Unlike a blog where only one person talks at a time in formal address, a forum permits a better sense of community where everyone is involved in a conversation. I can understand how some folks don’t feel comfortable typing in a setting like that, but it’s all we have. If you don’t post or respond on the forum, we don’t know you are there. That’s an inherent weakness, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Still, insofar as we have a church, it manifests most strongly there.

Over and over again, I encourage you to take advantage of what we can offer in that forum. It’s the best way we can get to know each other. It’s the only way your soul can take some shape that we recognize as a real person.

And without that, it’s exceedingly difficult to pray for you. You are leaving an awful lot of divine heritage on the table, and it really belongs to you, but you have to take a bite. That “bite” consists in saying something now and then. You’ll get a bite, but you won’t get bitten, I promise.

I still sense that out there on the ground just ahead of me somewhere is a physical church body. When that starts to take a shape I can recognize, there will likely be more online manifestations. Yes, I have some tentative plans, but there’s no point in saying much about them because it won’t mean anything until I have the reality to deal with. Until God grants souls to this dream, it remains just a dream.

The vision has morphed a good bit over the years, but the current shape of things has to do with reinforcing the heart-led way through exposure to Creation (the outdoors, in this case). I can see a thousand possibilities; I’m not sure what part of that myriad is the real thing. But I can assure you of this much: It will result in a lot of camera output. I keep seeing myself taking videos of landscapes, along with still images. We’ll see where this actually goes.

As noted on the forum, I’ve raised a prayer request in pursuit of that part of the dream. I’m praying for a motor vehicle of some sort that would be devoted to the task of getting me to those places worthy of admiration. Given the real context of what it’s like here in Oklahoma, and what my body can tolerate, there’s not that many places I can actually go on my bicycle. I’m really frustrated, because I’ve tried and it won’t work for me. The money wasn’t wasted; I’ll wear out that bike in due time. It remains a pertinent tool. Still, I know from experience I can’t do this on a bicycle alone. So if you feel drawn to the mission, pray with me about a vehicle.

For now, I envision going camping out of a small car or pickup. I have the camping gear, and I can drag the bike along that way. But that unexpected long hike I took a few weeks ago lets me know that hiking is not gone from me forever, not yet. Don’t ask me how all of this is going to be important to forming a church; I know only that it is critical to how I’ll draw people. It’s about the setting.

That’s as much as I should say for now. There is a church here online, and it will sprout at least one physical church body sometime in the future. If this ministry means anything at all to you, let’s do church.