What is Church?

We are a little over a year into a church plant in our neighborhood and things are sometimes slow going. Well, if we're all honest they are always slow going. Sometimes, I worry things are going too slowly. We have lots of friends in many different ministries around the world, and we sometimes look on with a little bit of jealousy. Some missionary friends of ours here recently planted a church too. They have a band, several leaders, and a good 50+ attendance on Sunday mornings. We planted a church recently too. We have no band, Ashley and I are the only leaders, and we average about 12-15 people on Sunday evenings, not including our family. We get jealous, and sometime feel like we aren't very successful.

I work as a sort of teaching elder at another church on Sunday mornings. They call me pastor, but I'm technically not a pastor there. I just preach, and a pastor is much more than this. There, we average about 150 people on Sunday mornings. There is a band, leaders, and even a legit sign out front. Sometimes, when I'm there, I wonder when our small church plant will have the same size and "legitimacy."

When we think of church, we often think of something like this: designated building, seating, families, morning service with band led worship, announcements, message/sermon, meet and greet, then we all go eat lunch in our Sunday best. Our church plant is a far-cry from this. We meet on Sunday evenings, we sing some worship songs with the best youtube has to offer, I give a 30 minute message about what the Lord is teaching me and how he is challenging us as a body, then we have coke and chips (occasionally brownies or even hot wings) as we ALL hang out for about an hour afterwards.

It doesn't stop there, though. Ashley and Salem get together for lunch or light shopping during the

week. I try to meet up with Jorge once and a while and talk about life, marriage, and more. Throughout the week, we have visits and lunches and dinners with Sebas and Christian and Edson and Ofson and more. Erick comes by to watch a movie and play some cards. Mauricio stops by to get some prayer for his family. Martín visits to talk through some "if God exists" questions. Armando swings by to discuss a broken heart and what repentance should look like. We have impromptu bible studies and prayer times. We trade likes and jokes on Facebook. We pray for one another and look out for each other. When someone doesn't have food, we trade resources. We meet each other's needs. We grow together, even if we grow slowly. We live our lives side by side, yoked together. Some of us might be able to run faster or straighter, but we've found that it isn't good to run alone. So we pace with each other, and we run together.

It can be so easy to see church as a Sunday club, followed by beating the lunch crowd, then returning to the mundane of our lives on Monday. But that isn't church. Church is organic and living. It isn't a place, but a whole. It's the body working, laboring, and living together to the glory of our creator. It's locking arms, walking together and being known by our love for one another. It's co-laboring for Christ and setting an example of a love that in unconditional and unchanging, but one that does not leave us as we are. A love that produces in us all that Christ demands of his followers.

 Consider how often scripture says that we are "members of one body," "members of one another," "drink of the same spirit," "unity of the faith," and so much more. Consider the charges we're given in God's word about confessing our sins one to another, going to our brother/sister when we see him or her in sin, going to those who have offended us to make things right in humility and forgiveness. Consider the example in Acts, how there was "no need among them" because they "had everything in common." Is this what we look like today? I don't think so. Not when we also consider the great need around us. Not when we consider the plethora of unchallenged sin among us. Not when we consider that our only time with the Lord comes from a Sunday morning sermon, and rarely to never from personal study. Not when we don't talk about the Lord and his word with our brothers and sisters throughout the week. Not when we don't participate in the mission of Christ by living and sharing the gospel.

If we're honest, we'll realize that we are failing. We are in need of a refining and testing. And, Church, it's arriving. It's here in many places in the world. We will be attacked, persecuted, and challenged. We will be required, through testing, to prove our faithfulness to Christ. But we rest in this: even if we have been faithless, he remains faithful.

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:6-7

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."

1 Corinthians 12:12-27