Church

On why it’s not simply a building, but a movement.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Church, and the way believers view it. Traditionally, people tend to hear the word “Church” and think that it refers to a building where Christians meet, but this was never meant to be the case.

It is easy for society to see it this way, because it helps us to be able to fit and contain something in a neat little box, but the truth is, Church cannot be placed in a box; cannot be contained; cannot simply be categorised like that.

In the Bible, it tells us that a “Church” is a body of believers, not a stone and mortar building. Church is not a dead, inanimate object, but a living, breathing thing, made up of a number of parts; made up of any number of us that choose to follow Christ.

Church is us. We are Church. There is no vagueness, no doubt, and no half way, here. If we follow Christ, then we become part of something far bigger, and we become Church; one cog in the wonderful power and plan of God.

We become the body of Christ, here on earth, until He comes again, and we are called to behave towards people as He does. We are called to be humble, just, and merciful as we walk alongside Him.

We are called to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what they may or may not have done to us. We are called to be sympathetic; to help where we can, and more than anything else, we are called to LOVE.

I have seen so many groups of believers fall apart because they are looking on the Church as simply a building, rather than what it truly is. The truth is, that we all belong to the same Church in the end, anyway. We all belong to the Church of Jesus Christ, no matter which building we find ourselves in.

We are not called to criticise and pick holes in one Church or another. We are called to reach the lost, to be the light in an ever darkening world, and to love one another as God, and Jesus loved us.

The truth is, as Agnes Brown said in an episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys, “If we’re all going to the same place, who cares who’s driving the bus.” This is so true. If we are all followers of Christ, we are effectively all on the same path. Surely that’s the important thing, rather than where the building we go to, to worship is situated.

This is why we need to start thinking of Church as more than just a physical building. That’s not what it is, nor was it ever meant to be that.

WE are the church, and it’s about time that we started behaving as the body of Christ; reaching out to the hurting people; lifting up those too broken to lift themselves; loving on people with the reckless, ferocious, unending, relentless love that Christ bestowed on us.