Church Tradition Story 3: Imago Dei

One time, Greg and I were hanging out with a group called Imago Dei. We went to a Celtic festival with them, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to the story.

Anyway, Greg and I had just met Imago Dei, but we didn't know what it was, so we asked Gary.
"It's us!"
"I mean, are you affiliated with a church or something?"
"I guess you could say that we are a church, but we prefer to think of ourselves as an intentional community. We aren't just about what happens on Sunday morning, we actually care about each other, and go through life together."

We talked about appropriate grounding for theological orthodoxy, I gave my "The Bible is not the word of God, Jesus is the Word" rant, and Gary nodded vigorously. I'm always a little terrified when my opinions on Christianity are taken seriously, so I asked Gary if Imago Dei is Emerging, and he said no, rather emphatically.

Imago Dei is a pretty neat intentional community. When we stopped at a gas station, a hat was passed around, and everyone shared as much money as they wanted to, which seems like a friendlier system than dividing up the bill exactly equally. When we got pizza, later, the hat got passed again. Pierre had given extra cash for gas, but didn't have any for pizza--no worries! We shared.

So we were sitting around, eating pizza, and Greg and I were asking some more questions about Imago Dei. Greg asked Jay where they meet; "Oh, we meet in homes," Jay said.
"So, you're a house church?" I asked.
"No, no, we're not a house church."
"If you grow big enough, would you get a building?"
"That's where our valuing multiplication comes in. If our group gets to be too big for us to have this sense of intimacy that we have now, we'll split."
"So you'll always be meeting in houses."
"Probably, yes"
"But you're not a house church."
"That's right."

Then, Greg asked, "Is there someone who's in charge?"
"Well, I'm the overseer."
"Oh, so you're the bishop."
"I guess you could say that I'm the episcopos, that's the Greek word for overseer, in the Bible."
"You're the bishop."
"Yes, I'm the episcopos."
"You're the bishop."
"I'm the episcopos."

Also, everyone in Imago Dei mentioned how much healing they experienced by reading John Eldredge's books; some spent a week with Eldredge in the middle of the woods in Colorado. I'm not sure how that's relevant to the story.

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Edgy church breaks old rules, insists on new ones