Go To "Church"? Huh?

How many people have heard any of the following -
"I'm going to be late for church in this traffic!"
"That church is SO beautiful!"
"Isn't it nice to be in the house of the Lord today?"
"Where are you going to eat after church?"

Now... has anyone ever stopped to ask why these statements don't make sense? (I won't touch on the last one, you can think on it yourselves.)

WE (Christ-followers) are the temple of God! And this is NOT individualistic. Corporately, we are the temple of God. We are the Body of Christ. We are a family under one Head - that is Jesus Christ.

Here are some passages that refer to God's people- US! and NOT to a building: 1 Cor. 3:16; Gal. 6:10; Eph. 2:20-22; Heb. 3:5; 1 Tim. 3:15; 1 Pet. 2:5; 4:17.

Arthur Wallis once said beautifully - "In the Old Testament, God has a sanctuary for His people; in the New, God has His people for a sanctuary."

In fact, for the first 3 centuries, Christians did not have any special buildings. In fact the first building that can be identified as a Christian meeting place was found in an archeological excavation in Syria- the house of Dura-Europos. It was destroyed in AD 256. But it wasn't a "church building" - it was actually a remodeled house that was made to fit a larger number of believers in one place. They tore down the walls to 2 bedrooms to make one big living room.

Imagine if we would all stop calling buildings "churches" and started exclusively calling God's people gathered in a given location "churches"... we could start something magnificiant right there...

Isn't it also something that the church of Jerusalem had thousands of people who met together in different houses, perhaps even at different times of the week, and yet stilled called themselves "the church of Jerusalem." I won't elaborate here. This part is just food for thought.

What is the church then?
- Christ on earth - His Body for the world to see!
- Christ's Bride - called to be pure!
- The temple of God - all members functioning together in an ekklesia

What is the church not?
- A man-made building
- A service that occurs every week at given times
- An individual believer

[Ekklesia is the Greek word that is translated as "church" - some of the early translators refused to translate the word as "church" because it was a bit obscure. Instead, they translated it - "congregation".]

Hope this was a bit enlightening! Any comments? Suggestions? Objections?
- Dave

 

Well most people I know have no problem calling a building a church. The things about it though, is that it takes away meaning from what the Bible calls church.

Most Christians see themselves as individuals who have the option of going to meetings on Sunday and/or a middle of the week service. They see themselves as meeting "in the house of God".

Why do most Christians call a church building a "house of God"?
God does not dwell in a building! His Spirit does not sit on the mercy seat of the tabernacle anymore! The church was born when the Spirit of God came upon those waiting in Jerusalem at Pentecost. And now we are God's temple - corporately. The Christian life was never meant to be lived individualisticly.

Some of you may think I'm pushing the issue a bit, but the truth is that calling a building a church has led to the redefinition of church. People may understand that the church is not a building and that it is the Bride of Christ - however, our language does not reflect our understanding of this. The way we grammatically word things means a lot. Otherwise, we'd all sound like yoda when we talked! :laugh: (I hope you get that)

To say it is still okay to call a building a church (even if you "know" that it isn't), underlines the fact that we don't actively practice our own knowledge and thus, dumbs down the significance of the Bride of Christ.

Thanks all,
- Dave

 

I posted this same message on my blog and I got this wonderful reply to it so I thought I'd share it with everyone else:

- D. J. W.

-Dave