Is The Church Identified As The Bride Essay

Located in the heart of downtown Cedar Rapids this Historical brick building with its’ decorative molding and beautiful stain glass windows is the home of a subculture of biblically based Christians. This church family meets every Sunday like many churches who revere Sunday as being the Lord’s day, set aside for rest and worship of God. Biblically based Christianity is a vast culture of faith in God carried out by many subcultures called churches, made up of people who seek to worship God and to foster a personal relationship with him. One of the most important things that make a subculture is a question of what is it that brings these people together? This foundational question is not only the question of the subculture, but is also the defining

God loves his Church and Jesus is the one who builds the Church. Then, it goes without saying that God loves the local church and Jesus builds the local church. Unfortunately, there are many factors that come into play, causing churches to become complacent or stagnate before entering into a season of decline. Yet this can be avoided through the process of revitalization.

Currently, the level of intimacy is much greater than at any other time in my life, the amount of personal time comes from consciously altering my thoughts to dwell on Jesus.

No doubt, you are aware the Church is in decline—both in membership and in its influence in the world, for the past several decades. Several key elements are missing in the lives of most Christians, which are rarely addressed in our church pulpits or in the books we read. How We Christians Miss The Boat unabashedly addresses these issues, with dead-on solutions, which will change and revolutionize the lives’ of all its readers.

Dulles states, “It picks up the biblical theme that God has fashioned for himself a people feely communicating his spirit and his gifts” (50). The Body of Christ as stated in Dulles is, “the main point of mutual union, concern and dependence of the members of the local community upon one another,” (43). The body of Christ will only function is the whole community is willing to work together to reach a personal growth in their relationship with God. Now that we have an idea of what Church as mystical communion consists of I will discuss the strengths and weakness of this model. The strength of this model is that emphasizes a shared life with the community instead of shutting them off. This is a strength because when people come together as a whole everything holds so much more meaning and people can form a stronger bond with God, now that it is much more personal and voluntary. Another strength is that this model improves people spirituality and prayer life now that they feel that personal connection that they formed. A weakness of this model is that it creates unsure relationship between the visible and invisible, since Grace allows people to get closer to God through the invisible such as communion while the visible structure like institutionalism tries to emphasize their power over the whole people. I have discussed what the models mean, their strength and weakness of each so now I will note the difference and

What is church? By what authority do you do this? And, what must I do to be saved? Conflicts within Christianity have caused debates over Christ’s nature involved the most fundamental realities of faith and practice.

Toronto’s branch of the Christian City Church, also known as C3, is made up of mainly millennials who take a different approach to the traditional Sunday church. C3 is a movement to make religion more casual and not as traditional. From Christian rock bands to EDM, the C3 movement believes in trying something new for millennial Christians, a more interesting atmosphere. with more than 450 churches in 64 countries, originating in New Zealand. The C3’s movement uses a ‘dressed-down approach’ for their Sunday service and their large following on social media to communicate with their church-goers. Using social media and setting themselves apart from other churches, they were able to increase their church community from 8 to 800. The church’s

Our community has undergone numerous struggles to create a solid Church; a place where we can resemble and teach the practices

Metonymy - “I want to accept Jesus Christ into my life and join the church.” (235) The author used this device to refer to the church as a group rather than

First and foremost a marriage is to built on grace and for a marriage to be built on grace it has to rely on grace. Each individual in a marriage needs to lean on God’s grace to grow in Christ, the more Christ-like an individual is the easier they are to live with. God extends his grace and love not only for salvation but

Marriage – symbolizes the union of Christ and Church which is the fruit of Eucharist.

The church is the bride of Christ. Scripture tells us “These are those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their personal savior and have received eternal life. In the New Testament, Christ, the Bridegroom, has sacrificially and lovingly chosen the church to be His bride” This is something to not be taken lightly; in fact this is a very serious matter. Scripture tells us that the church is the institution that God desired to use to reach the world to himself. In Matthew chapter 28 Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples.” It is interesting that Jesus left it up to mere man to continue the message of the gospel. Jesus could have advanced the church in anyway that He wanted to, and yet he chose man to spread the news. The book of acts is full of these incredible stories of how Jesus followers carried out their mission. I am writing this paper on this topic today because of the success of Jesus followers in the early church. Through much persecution, tribulation, and trials, they were successful. The reality is, this is not something to be taken lightly, but something that is incredibly critical and applicable in the culture in which we live. We live in a very unique culture and Leonard Sweet, in the book “The Church in Emerging Culture” states, “of course the problem of how Christians relate with culture is as old as Christianity itself. The New Testament makes it clear that there were sharp difference of opinion in the first century over how to

The traditional wedding dress, beautiful flowers, a fancy cake, the wonderfully decorated church filled with family and close friends…. every little girl dreams of one day having a fairy tale wedding. With little thought around what her husband will be like, what kind of wife she will be or how much this big elaborate wedding will cost, she sees herself as a beautiful bride. Most women, and a few men, think of their wedding day as being one of the most important days of their lives. Their wedding day is planned with the intentions of being a once in a lifetime kind of event, their childhood fantasy, a dream come true. This day has to be perfect and so the first step is to figure out how to seamlessly make this dream become a reality. With

The image of the relationship between bridegroom and bride used to explain the relationship between Christ and the Church in the scriptures are appealing to a natural human relationship. The Scripture however shows that Christ’s love for the Church surpasses natural human love. Christ’s love for the Church is a love of complete self-giving expressed in his death on the Cross. In this same vain, Christian marriage too aspires not only for natural human love, but also to Christ’s love for the Church:

Marriage is universal; in fact, all cultures have social or legal contracts that join two or more people in matrimony. The ritual of marriage is religious to some individuals, signifying a divine covenant with another, while to others marriage is a secular contract. This particular ritual has fluctuated between the two throughout generations and cultures. Historically, these matrimonial contracts solidified alliances and were frequently arranged by entire families or even nations. While these matrimonial alliances are still widely practiced throughout the world today, a majority of marriages in western countries espouse for other reasons. Whether Americans marry for procreation, wealth, or love, the rituals that dramatize the important themes in our modern society have evolved into a multibillion dollar industry. The economically fortunate often hire wedding planners to organize an extravagant ceremony, dinner, and party envious to all attendees. Alas, even those on tight budgets will spend well above their means for a beautiful and memorable night. While many couples dramatize the themes of love, family, and celebration, the ritual of matrimony has progressed into an increasingly elaborate affair. Contemporary brides show heightened desire to have perfection on their special day, desperately seeking the most beautiful dress, unique decorations, and an unparalleled ceremony and reception. This dramatizes modern themes in American society of competition, individuality, social