where is the church?

Has someone ever asked you 'where is your church?'...

Hasn't our Pavlovian response always been to give them the address or directions to the church building? And that's cool, right.... because most people who ask the question are really asking 'where does your church meet?' or 'where is your church building?'...

I am just asking us all to consider changing the language we use... to do that, we have to divorce ourselves from the notion that the building is the church. Yeah, most of us know that and many of us try to live it, but we still find ourselves using phrases like 'let's go to church' or 'come to church with me', etc...

I know it can be a difficult transition, because it's been ingrained in us over generations: we 'go' to the '6th and Murphy Street Baptist Church' or we 'go' to the 'Maumee Heights Church of Christ', etc... 'yeah, we go to SaddleCreek' or, 'yeah, we're members over at the WillowBack Community Church'....

The fundamental problem is that the church is not a 'place', it is a group of people... so, it cannot be something one 'goes to'... Our forefathers and foremothers (is that a word?) have unwittingly confused (at least verbally) the living breathing Body with a cold inanimate brick-n-mortar object.

Why is it such a big deal? Because words mean things... and until we truly convert ourselves to using correct language about The Body which Jesus Christ died to establish and will return to take home someday, we will continue the generational cycle of teaching our kids wrong.

Here's a challenge: for the next 30 days, make a conscious effort to stop using language that suggests the church is a 'place' we 'go to'... just try it.

And the next time someone asks where your church is, answer (honestly and humbly) this way: my church is in the grocery store smiling and helping and at the school teaching children and in the hospital healing people and gathering hay in the fields and at WalMart shopping and at the nursing home visiting and at home washing the family clothing.... (don't be a smart-aleck, but do try it...)

Is that not the correct answer? I know the church meets on Sunday to worship, and many congregations meet in a building... I get that.... but the church is made up of the saved, and those saved folks work and are active 168 hours a week out in the community! (and, incidentally, I believe you can learn a LOT more about the church in its 'natural' environment than you can from its 2-hour-a-week worship time)

J.B. Phillips wrote a small book entitled 'Your God is too Small'... and I would suggest that if your God is trapped in a building and 'accessed' once a week there, that He is indeed too small...

So let's try to think and speak differently about the Body....

It will keep our mind focused on what the church really is supposed to be... I think the original language (ecclesia) suggests that the church is 'the called out'. So let's start talking about it in those terms...

God Bless!