Restoration: What is worth restoring?

This is a question that has been on my mind for quite some time now, though I have not been able to verbalize it. I see the question in many of the ministers that I interact with, in many of the blogs I read, and I see it in the church. I think the vast majority agree that there are some very important ideals represented in the 1st century church that need to be emulated. However, there are some very different ideas about what needs to be preserved and how.

I am in the process of reading three books: The Crux of the Matter (an essential read for any restoration Christian trying to make sense of today's Church of Christ), Searching for God Knows What (A great follow up to Blue Like Jazz that challenges readers to look through the surface into the heart of God), and The Simple Church (a call to a simple discipleship model in the Church that gets everyone on the same page with "One Spirit and One Purpose").

These are three very different books with very unique authors. But as I have been reading them, they all seem to shout that there is a gravitational center to the Bible and the church must share it. One book calls it the core and the crux, another calls it the heart, another calls it the focus. Elsewhere I have heard it called target theology.

Call it what you want, but it is clear that there is a central theme that all else must revolve around. We must be a church of concentric circles. All of our ideals, practices, stances, and ministries must share the same gravitational center, or else our efforts become jumbled and unclear. If you happen to near a body of water while it is raining, through a small rock in and see how long you can keep your eyes on the point of entry. It gets lost quickly due to the hundreds of other ripples that are focused on where each drop of rain struck the water. But if you throw a small rock into a pond on a calm day, you can see clearly where the source of the ripples is long after the rock is thrown; even though the ripples can reach over the entire pond, the center is still discernable.

We must first restore the core of the bible, before we can ever attempt to restore biblical church.

That center is clearly LOVE.

God IS LOVE

God LOVEs mankind

We LOVE God in return

We LOVE those who God LOVES

From Genesis to Revelation the theme is clearly seen.

First and foremost, let us restore dynamic, revolutionary LOVE.

If we get that right, I think our churches need not fear their candle being snuffed out, and we as it's members need not fear the day we are laid bare before God in judgement.