A question to think about

Church: A Place or a People

Many will attribute the word church to a building.  It might be a pristine building, a house of Worship on the court square, or it might be an old, broad boarded house in the woods, at the end of a country road.  Whatever the building is or design that it follows, it is not a church.

I have seen and been in some magnificent buildings were people gather Sunday after Sunday.  I think of Howards’ Chapel, located on the north side of DeSoto State Park in northeast Alabama.  No other place of worship can compare.  The old stone building, built into a huge boulder at one end, with stain hardwoods floors and high vaulted ceiling, with exposed beams is nothing less than worshipful.  But it was not a church.

In Roswell, Georgia I sat in the sanctuary of the Roswell Street Baptist Church during a conference for pastors from around the southeast.  It was such a foreboding facility.  A balcony encircled the main floor, with a pulpit, choir loft and orchestra pit at the front of the ornate sanctuary.  But it was not a church.

No, no matter where the building is or how well kept or beautiful the building is, it is not the church.  For the church is not cold stone, stained glass windows, and studio production lighting.  Mortar and wood, marble and hard clay a church does not make.

A church is a living, breathing organism.  A church is something that can speak, touch, smell, weep, laugh, and breathe.  The church is not the building; the church is the people that make up the family of God.

We are the church!  Those of us who have received Christ as Savior.  Those who have been baptized into the body of Christ.  The ones who have joined themselves to the local body of believers.  Yes, that is the church in the world today!   We are the visible, change agents of Christ in the world.

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Titus 2:13-14 (KJV)

So church rise up and let the message of Christ be proclaimed for all the world to hear!