What if it’s time to re-examine what we mean when we identify using the name “church”?
One of my favorite stories from the past year is the account of a children’s choir that learned the old children’s song “The Church is the People.” They learned the song for a festival occasion—when Bishop Jonathan Holston was preaching in celebration of the church’s 100th birthday. Of course, they were fabulous when they helped lead worship.
However, that’s not the end of their worship leadership. Several weeks later during the pastor’s children’s sermon, a phrased question about the nature and definition of “church” led to a spontaneous outburst of the children’s understanding of who and what the church is. You’ve maybe guessed where there is going: The children burst into song, and before they finished, had completed the entire song. Church broke out in the midst of the gathering.
In the past year, as we have shared our bishop’s vision of establishing new faith communities, one challenge has presented itself over and over again. People want to know, “Where are the resources for 50 new churches?”
It is a great question. If we are only thinking about new faith communities that require brick, mortar and land, we have a tremendous challenge of financial resources. However, that thought tremendously miscalculates the 2014 need for church that goes beyond walls and into community. There are a multitude of places and ways that can provide a new faith community.
As these local church children remembered, the church is not walls or steeple but the gathered people. I have tried to be intentional in using the designation of “New Places for New People” to describe the focus of Congregational Development. In a world of community populations that have no generational participation or relationship with any local congregation, church has to move into the population before the population will move into church. And that is so very difficult for most of us.
Some of us have literally forgotten or have never known what it means to create church out of community rather than replenishment. And we have come to present to our communities that the church is a building that has doors that may or may not be open. Literally the doors may not be open, and emotionally they may not feel open.
In the past year, several local congregation experiences have spoken to me that when we are able to literally and emotionally open doors, our communities respond. I’ve spoken of the success of the St. Andrew-By-the-Sea Christmas Eve services that are held outdoors and in a public space, well traveled by the community. Other congregations have moved small groups into individual homes where people are able to invite neighbors who might never go first into the church building. Youth groups have long known the advantages of moving small groups into a fast food restaurant for faith development, and now adult groups are finding the benefits of having small groups that meet in public places that provide easier access for the 50 percent of our neighbors who are looking for open doors. A few congregations have begun to identify community spaces that may be places for satellite worship that will open doors to the community in a different environment.
We are the church. The children absorbed a very important lesson: We are not defined simply or best by bricks and mortar. As we move into a world where church is within and beyond walls, we can claim that wherever God’s people go, God is waiting.
So what if it is time for us to re-examine our definition of church?
– By Sara White
