From A Place For the God-Hungry:
Sometimes we get overly focused on matters that were foreign to the experience of the early church. We get worked up over matters were not a part of the experience of the earliest Christians. Think about what is familiar to contemporary Christians but which was absent among the eariest Christians...Are these things bad? No. Yet, it is possible to get so consumed by this stuff that we miss the work of God. We get wrapped up with "running the church" smoothly. Consequently we can spend hours in church committee meetings and the word "God" or "Jesus" may not even be mentioned. We miss seeing the lives that are being touched and changed by God while our time and energy is being consumed by the above.
Ultimately, being a Christian is all about relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It is to experience his life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Being a Christ follower is learning to treasure him more than houses, cars, careers, appearance, or having the latest toy. It is to believe that God is at work in me and in the church, the community of faith.
Until I hunger for that life, I will stay right where I am, wherever that might be. I will get focused on large or small church buildings, committees, and whatever-- while I miss what God is doing in the lives of ordinary people all around me.
If Jesus had a church, he would want his people to stay focused on what he is doing in real, everyday people. To miss what he is doing in our lives is to become focused on something other than Jesus.
Absolutely agree and get disillusioned when our running of a church takes over from us being the church. I think the tragedy is that church has been reduced to an event, and for that it is a commodity, rather than a body of spiritual relationships tha journey together with God. You actually don't need a service to achieve that. The service is now part concert, part seminar, part celebration but not 'church' in the biblical sense. The service doesn't readily lend itself to the achievement of community but rather corporateness. Monologue has replaced 'conversation' and the life of the Christian revolves around the event of church, supporting its many programs and committee structures and music practices. And sometimes the same people are expected to do this twice on Sundays. Meanwhile the rest of the world is oblivious to what happens behind our closed doors. We were told to go out....and we stayed.