A people, not a place

What is the Church, really? I know. It seems like such an easy question. “Come on, Blake! Can’t you give us something a bit more challenging?” I get it. For many of us, myself included, the Church is easily defined. The Church is on the micro-scale a building and on the macro-scale an institution established by Jesus himself. Some of my earliest memories involve learning about the Church. I can remember my mother putting my hands together and teaching me to say, “Here is the Church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” For my mother it was probably something she found which kept a boy with a precocious mind occupied. For me, it was instructional. It taught me that the Church was nothing other than a building. This understanding of the Church is only emphasized by the way “Churched” people talk. We chat about what is going on at the Church, what we would like to see going on at the Church, when we were last at Church, and even who was or wasn’t at Church and, “Did you see what they were wearing?!?!?” We would be hard pressed not to say that we have equated Church with four walls and a roof.

This view of the Church is not just the prevailing view among those of us who frequent Sunday worship services, it is the prevailing view of our culture. To the world around us, the Church is an institution, with branch offices on various highways and byways, an institution with which they associate an array of expectations and emotions. What is the Church to them? It is that building down the street that all those people show up at on Sunday and snarl traffic.

The longer I am part of Christ’s Church, the more I wonder if we might have it all wrong. What if the Church isn’t a building? What if it is more than an institution? On my best days I wrestle with how a building can love, show compassion, bring hope, and speak truth to a world that desperately needs it . You know. . .all those things the Church is called to do. On my worst days, I want to shout that the Church has to be more, more than a building that is full 3 out of 168 hours every week. Surely Jesus didn’t intend the Church to be a three-hour-a-week gig. While I wrestle with the knowledge that the Church is probably more, I am not really sure about what that more is.

I think that part of my problem lies in that when I consider what more the Church might be this more is usually associated with a building. Yet, when I read Paul in Ephesians 2, I realize that Jesus never intended the Church to be equated with a building. In fact, in forming the Church, Jesus was countering a long standing tradition of equating God’s work with a building, the Temple. When Jesus founded his Church he founded it as a people among whom he dwelled. Quite simply, Jesus’ Church is a people among whom he dwells, not a place in which he dwells, and intentionally so. As a people and not a place, Jesus’ Church can be alive and active. As a people, the Church can reach and love, embrace and heal. As a people, the Church can mobilize, move, and advance in ways a building never could. In other words, as a people within whom God dwells the Church becomes a living connection between heaven and earth, between the sacred and the secular so that God might reach to this world rather than calling a recalcitrant world to come to him.

The Church as a people among whom God dwells is the means by which God is still on mission in this world. The best thing is that you and I get to play a part, for if the Church is a people then you and I are the Church. If the Church is a people, and if we are the Church, then wherever you or I are, there the Church is. If the Church is where you and I are, then God is where we are as well, reaching, loving, wooing, connecting heaven and earth and doing it all through us. If we are the Church, then the Church shops at Wegmans, drives on Highway 17, and moves about in various ways all through the Triple-Cities. If God is where the Church is, then God is showing up at Wegmans, driving along Highway 17 and showing up in all kinds of ways, wooing, loving, healing, and reaching. This is the Church. You are the Church. I am the Church. We are Church.

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Talk about Church differently: What we say teaches our children in both implicit and explicit ways. When we speak of the Church as a place by saying things like, “Let’s go to Church” we implicitly teach them that the Church is a building. Consider saying things like “We are going to worship with our friends” or “ What did you learn from your teachers in Sunday School today?” and reserve the word “Church” as a way of referring to the people of God.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Ask God to teach you to be the Church: During this series we encourage you to wear a silicon arm band with the phrase, “I am Church.” Use this band as a reminder of your identity and allow it to serve as a prayer prompt. Every time you see it, consider turning your mind to God and asking him to teach you how to be the Church.