We have used the “Church is not a building” line so many times that—not only have we forgotten that, at least in some ways, a church so obviously is a building—we rarely pause to think what other temptations we could similarly rebut by adapting this simple statement. So let me suggest some other worthwhile applications of this expression:
Church is not a magazine, regardless of how much you appreciate Record. Church is not a website—or even a whole network of websites—even if accessible 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world. Church is not a TV channel, despite the temptation to just switch on and get “churched.”
Church is neither a corporation nor club, no matter how well run it might be or how well it cares for its members. Church is not an accumulation of traditions or habits, even if they are meaningful or dearly held. Church is not a set of beliefs or collection of mere information, no matter how important, startling or urgent they might seem.
In short, “church is not . . .” many of the things we might be tempted to assume as they swirl around us in the various cultures of Adventism and church-ness.
Commenting on “Technology and the Gospel”—and the shortcuts we are tempted to take to share “church”—in Christianity Today, Christian author Brian McLaren urges that people today “don’t need you to spoon-feed them information in lectures like they used to; they can Google it way faster. They need you to do other things . . . to help them sift through the information, integrate it, incarnate it, reflect on it, model it. In view of technology, the question remains: What is it that the gathered church can do that nobody else can do?”
It’s a vital question in a world awash with information, lifestyle choices, worthy causes and entertainment options. So here are a few suggestions:
Church is a community. Yes, there are other positive, healthy communities around us and of which we can be a part but church is a special and specific kind of community. It is a community based on a shared connection with Jesus and that somehow works together to collectively be an expression or incarnation of God in our world. As Paul put it,
“Now all of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it”.
1 Corinthians 12:27
Church is also a community with an acute awareness of the presence of God. Jesus said,
“For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them”.
Matthew 18:20
This is a powerful dynamic of the church as it gathers to worship or to work. But we should not use this to mean a limit to this presence, instead taking this specialised cue to look for the presence of God in all our lives and in the world around us.
Church is a place of accountability in the practice of our faith. While we struggle with how we can best do it in a practical sense, we cannot ignore the Bible’s urgings that we have a responsibility to help and encourage each other in living our faith.
“You must warn each other every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God”.
Hebrews 3:13
And church is an enactment of the reality and purposes of God. Too often with our individualistic ways of thinking about salvation, we miss the many plurals in the Bible’s descriptions of what God has done for us and what He calls us to. Consider the following verse, with an emphasis on church community:
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago”.
Ephesians 2:10
We—together—are collectively called to enact the kingdom of God, here and now. That is church.
In The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, Lesslie Newbigin asks the question the other way around: “How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.”
WRITER: Nathan Brown – Author and Book Editor at Signs Publishing