Have you ever wrote or used a Mixed Metaphor in some way.   Remember the classic from Biff in Back to the Future - “Make like a tree and get out of here!”  A Mixed Metaphor is using 2 different images in the same sentence that don’t usually connect.

Poets use them all the time - TS Eliot wrote about "Forgetful Snow" in his Wasteland poem and Yeats wrote about "Treading on dreams" - we know that snow doesn’t have the ability to forget and dreams can’t be physically walked on - but it’s the unexpected mixing of metaphors that help us see things we might not ordinarily see.

When the NT writers talk about the Church and it’s members - they push the mixing of metaphors into overdrive - we read that the church is like a body, a flock of sheep, branches of a vine, a bride, a temple, a city on a hill, a royal priesthood, salt of the earth and so on.  It’s like a photo album of metaphors.  

The Institutional view or the stucture that Jesus gave the church is like the goblet that makes the enjoyment of the organic possible. It doesn’t hold back or restrict - it unleashes - it's the platform from which the Organic nature or the Activity of the church is unleashed.  Today we’re going to look at the Organic church so we can see what the church and it’s members are LIKE.

And that’s when all the metaphors for the church come into play - body, bride, temple, family, city on a hill, etc.