Why does the TLV use ‘Messiah’s Community’ instead of ‘Church’?
Unfortunately, today, people think of a church as a building with stained glass windows, instruments, choir lifts, collection boxes and pews. It’s a building on a street, made by sticks and bricks. We grant the need for housing, but prefer accentuating that “the church”–so called–speaks more to the nature of relationships between living people than where the living people happen to convene. To illustrate, a turtle is less about the shell than it is the organic creature that lives inside the shell. Similarly it’s a faith-based community that meets–“living stones”–thus our preference for using “community.”
As for “Messianic,” we prefer this faith-based term given its connection to Jewish hopes and aspirations. Wanting to accentuate how the Jesus story connects to the Jewish story, we’re pleased to use it, given our interest in offering a telling of the Bible’s story that comports with the sensibilities of its Jewish host culture.
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