God Does Not Live Here

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. - Acts 17:22–27

The first two words in Webster's definition of Church, are "a building." That is not a definition that flows from a Biblical understanding of Church, but rather from the practices of Christians throughout the centuries. The early Christians, before they were known as Christians, simply were called, or said to be of, "The Way." They were people who were part of a movement, people who were part of something bigger than themselves; The Way (of Jesus), called to live and to love, to care for people, to make disciples -- to expose and invite people to become apprentices of Jesus, followers of The Way -- throughout their communities and the world. That does not sound like a building, it sounds like a movement.

For the first several hundred years of Christianity, there were no "church" buildings -- The Way was illegal, people had to meet in secret in homes. And an amazing thing happened. The number of Christians grow from as low as 25,000 in AD 100 to as high as 20,000,000 some 200 or so years later. Interestingly, nearly 2,000 years later when Mao Zedong outlawed Christianity in China, taking away all of their buildings, the Church again experienced phenomenal growth, growing from approximately 2,000,000 immediately after it was banned in the mid 1940s to estimates of 60,000,000 40 years later. Perhaps the two most significant periods of growth in Christianity happened when they had no buildings.

But, buildings are not the problem. Buildings are good, they serve an important purpose. The problem comes with what often comes when we begin to think that God lives in the building, that the Church is a building, that our Christianity happens "there." The reason Webster's defines "Church" as a building is that Christians have often lived as if what went on in the building was the start and end of their faith. Now, we have ground to cover to change that impression -- to live into the reality of the Church not as a building, but as a redemptive force, a prophetic community, a counter-cultural people, regardless of where we are -- a people of the Way.

The challenge as we step more and more from the idea of going to church to the reality of being the church is to not minimize what happens when we gather together as church. We do not need to diminish the importance of what we do when we gather together, but actually to elevate it. What does church look like when what we do on Sunday is a celebration of the ways we have been the church throughout the week? What does it look like to create a "thin space" when we gather, a space where the presence of God is almost palpable? What practices and ways of worship do we need to engage in to create this thin space? How can we -- when we gather together -- more fully worship God and more fully celebrate His reality in all areas of our everyday life? These are questions that we all must ask, conversations that we all must engage in as we make our Sunday experience a more integrated (though special and essential) expression of our everyday Christianity.

Do you agree with this understanding of our Sunday morning times?
- If you disagree, what do you think the purpose of our Sunday morning time is?
In what ways have you or do you experience God's presence?
- Is it on Sunday mornings?
- Is it a different time?
How might you more fully experience His presence on Sundays?
How might that influence and inform the rest of your week?

God does not live in a building. Yet when we gather we can meet Him in very special ways.

Peace, hope and love