The church?

What do you think of when you think of church? A building? An activity? Worship?

I think that the early Christians would look at our meanings for the word "church" and wonder what we are talking about.

Constantine did the body of Christ a huge disservice when he essentially hijacked it for his purposes. When he decried Christianity as a "socially acceptable" religion, he opened the door to the institutionalization of the church.

While I believe God used this to aide his purposes, I also believe it began the distortion of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

No longer was following Jesus a risky proposition. Instead of a conscious decision to follow the way of Jesus, regardless of the costs, following Jesus became a part of the Roman Empire. The orders of one man took a counter-cultural movement and integrated it into the mainstream.

So what does that mean for us?

It impacts us in many ways and forces us to evaluate what it means to be a "Christian." Consider some of the things Paul wrote:

"Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19)

"Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love." (Ephesians 4:15-16)

"He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs." (Acts 17:24-25)

I often hear people say things like "you can’t say that in church" or "you can’t do that in the church building." How would our behavior change if we acknowledged that we are the "church building?"

We are the temple of God and the body of Christ. We are called to be the presence of God wherever we find ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we are in a building with a sign out front that says "Church of Christ", sitting in our living room, at work, or walking the halls of our school. If we are a baptized believer, then we are the church. We are the dwelling place of God in this world. The only building that really matters is the body that you live in every day.

shine!
Jason