What is the Church?

Here is the article I just wrote for our church‘s Newsletter:

What is the church? Webster says it can be a building, a religious service, a denomination, all Christians world-wide, or a local group of worshippers. Only two of these five have to do with people. We often refer to the building when we say “church”. Did you know that the word church appears 111 times in the English Bible? Every single one of those times, it refers to people. It never means a denomination, they didn’t have those. It never means a religious service (as we say, “I came for Sunday School but didn’t stay for church”). In the Bible it certainly never means a building. They did not have church building until about 300 years after the church began! In fact, I think it does more harm than good when we use the word church and mean anything other than the people.

In the Old Testament they had the Tabernacle and later, the Temple. These were the places where God dwelt.  Scripture even uses the phrase “God’s House.” When we get to the New Testament, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 that as believers, we are God’s sanctuary! God dwells in us! He has given us His Spirit when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. When we fully grasp this idea, I believe it will change our perspective on things.

There are some things we would not do in the church (the building). There are some things we wouldn’t want lost people to associate with the church (the building). But when we realize that we are the building, we will live differently! As followers of Christ we carry God with us all of the time. The church is us, the people; both locally, those who meet in the building and call ourselves Ca-Vel Baptist Church; and around the world. Believers all over the world are as much a part of the church as we are. I heard a Music Minister say recently, “I help lead the worship in this building where part of the church meets.” I liked that!

We are connected to every believer around the globe because of our common faith in Jesus Christ. The next time you catch yourself saying “church” and meaning a building, stop and think about what you really mean.

The Kingdom Advancing

I just returned from a prayer gathering for Ethiopia.  What sticks in my mind was how small it was and how large it was.  It was open to anyone in our community who wanted to pray for a medical clinic in Ethiopia.  I talk some about that clinic here.  There are 4 churches in our area who are partnering with believers in Ethiopia to establish and refurbish this clinic.  The primary goal of the clinic is to meet Spiritual needs.  Physical needs are a secondary goal.  In one sense I was struck by how small the crowd was.  There were 30 people.  In these 4 churches there are over 500 in weekly attendance.  These 4 churches have sacrificed much to financially support this work.  That is a blessing!  But what troubled me was what it says about our folks if 500 of decide to send money to this work and 30 come to pray?  Are we that blessed financially where we can simply throw money towards a work that we don’t care much about?  Are we that lazy about prayer where we can salve our consciences and don’t feel the need to pray since we wrote a check?  Either answer is not good.

Now, I was also moved at how large the crowd was.  It was an incredible time of praying with brothers and sisters in the Lord who share a common vision and burden for our brethren in Ethiopia.  We were doing His Kingdom work today.  Not our church’s work, not our community work, but His kingdom’s work.  It was great seeing people come together for Christ and His Kingdom.  I marvel that He has allowed me to participate in what He is doing 7500 miles away from my home.  There were brothers and sisters in te Lord 7500 miles away praying for some of the same exact things we were praying for!  What a blessing!

Been a while

I’m sorry I haven’t updated anything in about 10 days.  We were out of town last weekend.  This past weekend we had water, a lot of water, in our basement.  A sewage line with a 2 foot opening in the top of the pipe is never a good thing.  Add on top of that, 5 inches of rain in about 10 hours and it is a recipe for trouble.  God has been faithful though.  We have a lot of kids things and memorabilia items to sort through and dry out.  It could have been much worse though.  We are grateful to the Lord for sparing us any more damage.

Knowing the Books

I am sitting here in class, disappointed that high school students in a Christian School cannot write out the books of Bible in order and spelled correctly.  They have had a couple od days notice on this.  They had to learn them in my class last year as well.  It is an unfortunate thing to have a graduate of a Christian School who could not find Hebrews or Isaiah!

Every believer should memorize the order of the books.  It is discouraging as a Pastor to announce your passage of Scripture on Sunday morning and 5 minutes later there are still pages been rustled as people look for the book.  Especially when you have been preaching a series in that bok for 2 months!!

Ethiopia Here We Come

We have our next Mission Team meeting tonight.  Lord willing we will be leaving for Ethiopia in less than 14 weeks!  It will be here soon.  Preparing for this meeting has been a good process for me, except for the vaccinations.  We read a “Warriors of Ethiopia“, book written by a former missionary in Ethiopia.  The book tells the stories of cozens of Ethiopian believers and how the Lord used them.  This was a compelling read.  We also read 2 Corinthians in one sittting 3 times.  We memorized 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.  Finally we summarized each paragraph of 2 Corinthians by answering the question, “what does Paul say here about ministry?”  It has been a good time of study.