Micah 6:8
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”
John 4:24
“God is spirit, and those who belong to God must worship in spirit and truth.”
Unknown –
“We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by being the church.”
Next Sunday, according to the lectionary, will be Reign of Christ Sunday, but we will instead be following a Thanksgiving theme that week since the Sunday following Thanksgiving will be the first Sunday in Advent. (Yes. Advent, already, with Christmas right behind!)
That leaves today for me to ask a question that I’ve been tossing around in my mind for a while: “How are we doing as church?”
We all have an idea of what church is – and chances are good that your idea and mine are different in a lot of ways. We could probably spend a couple of months’ worth of Sundays just on this one question. Is church the building we meet in? Is church the songs we sing or the ritual actions we take? Is church the people who gather? The answer to all of these is yes and no.
Nowhere in the New Testament could I find a use of the word church to describe a building. The word is most often used to refer to the people of a specific area who made up the various gatherings.
Scripture, Old and New, is filled with instructions for how the people of God are supposed to be and act and do. Two of the readings we started with today are good examples: Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” and John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who belong to God must worship in spirit and truth.”
But these are only two out of dozens, if not hundreds of instructions found in scripture, telling us how to be people of God – or church. We still have to put them together for ourselves.
So – we are the church – for convenience sake we’ll go with that definition as it is expressed so well in the third reading --- this one from an unknown speaker/writer: “We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by being the church.”
This finally leads us back around to where I wanted to be in the first place: “How are we doing as church?” Any and all of us who come together and call ourselves part of the Church of the Open Door -- is what you find here what you are seeking? Are we doing what you think we should be doing?
Do we have an idea of what our calling is? Do we recognize what our needs are?
If you have been around here and listened to me speak for a while, you know that my messages often start out as a scribbled note on a scrap of paper. Well, last week I unearthed one of those scribbles that read “Church is a family -- not always perfect, but trustworthy.” And then there was a second part that didn’t seem to be part of the first but was still connected. This one read “small churches -- big ministry.”
That’s all it said. After mulling it over for a while, I managed to remember that it was Rev. LaTaunya Bynum, our Regional Minister, who had spoken those words. I ended up texting her to ask, “who and when,” and she reminded me that “Church is a family...” was from Rev. Marty Williams, and the “Small churches – Big ministry” is from Toni herself.
Those two short phrases brought me to do some serious thinking. Yes, church is a family -- the place and the people who we call “home”, and like a family, we, as church, are often far from perfect, but the church we form is ours and we can trust it.
I don’t know exactly where Rev. Bynum was going with her “small churches, big ministry” saying, but we certainly are a small church and for a small church, we have some good sized ministries, and instead of feeling guilty that we can’t do more, we have focused on an area we can manage, and we take it very seriously...and we help a lot of people (and ourselves, in the process.)
So thank you Marty and Toni. Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing them abroad. And thank you to the Spirit who brought them on a roundabout journey to a scrap of paper, and to finally reach us here and nudge us into serious consideration.
And so – one more time...“How are we doing as church?”
(I welcome your thoughts in response.)
That leaves today for me to ask a question that I’ve been tossing around in my mind for a while: “How are we doing as church?”
We all have an idea of what church is – and chances are good that your idea and mine are different in a lot of ways. We could probably spend a couple of months’ worth of Sundays just on this one question. Is church the building we meet in? Is church the songs we sing or the ritual actions we take? Is church the people who gather? The answer to all of these is yes and no.
Nowhere in the New Testament could I find a use of the word church to describe a building. The word is most often used to refer to the people of a specific area who made up the various gatherings.
Scripture, Old and New, is filled with instructions for how the people of God are supposed to be and act and do. Two of the readings we started with today are good examples: Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” and John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who belong to God must worship in spirit and truth.”
But these are only two out of dozens, if not hundreds of instructions found in scripture, telling us how to be people of God – or church. We still have to put them together for ourselves.
So – we are the church – for convenience sake we’ll go with that definition as it is expressed so well in the third reading --- this one from an unknown speaker/writer: “We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by being the church.”
This finally leads us back around to where I wanted to be in the first place: “How are we doing as church?” Any and all of us who come together and call ourselves part of the Church of the Open Door -- is what you find here what you are seeking? Are we doing what you think we should be doing?
Do we have an idea of what our calling is? Do we recognize what our needs are?
If you have been around here and listened to me speak for a while, you know that my messages often start out as a scribbled note on a scrap of paper. Well, last week I unearthed one of those scribbles that read “Church is a family -- not always perfect, but trustworthy.” And then there was a second part that didn’t seem to be part of the first but was still connected. This one read “small churches -- big ministry.”
That’s all it said. After mulling it over for a while, I managed to remember that it was Rev. LaTaunya Bynum, our Regional Minister, who had spoken those words. I ended up texting her to ask, “who and when,” and she reminded me that “Church is a family...” was from Rev. Marty Williams, and the “Small churches – Big ministry” is from Toni herself.
Those two short phrases brought me to do some serious thinking. Yes, church is a family -- the place and the people who we call “home”, and like a family, we, as church, are often far from perfect, but the church we form is ours and we can trust it.
I don’t know exactly where Rev. Bynum was going with her “small churches, big ministry” saying, but we certainly are a small church and for a small church, we have some good sized ministries, and instead of feeling guilty that we can’t do more, we have focused on an area we can manage, and we take it very seriously...and we help a lot of people (and ourselves, in the process.)
So thank you Marty and Toni. Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing them abroad. And thank you to the Spirit who brought them on a roundabout journey to a scrap of paper, and to finally reach us here and nudge us into serious consideration.
And so – one more time...“How are we doing as church?”
(I welcome your thoughts in response.)
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