CLOVERDALE BAPTIST CHURCH 2015

I read many Facebook respondents in the last few days express sadness at the demolition of the forty-something year old building that housed the Cloverdale Baptist Church. I acknowledge my own melancholic sentiments as the giant arm of the shovel pushed through sanctuary walls and reduced them to rubble. I am permitted the feelings since I served as lead pastor for ten years from 1991-2001. I was daily inside the facility and officiated countless meetings and services, weddings and baptisms. My two children were each married to their sweethearts in that sanctuary into which sun blasted through the gaping wound this week before the walls disappeared. 

Now they must remain as memories and that is fine since next to the demolition site now stands a newly completed building with twice as much seating and classroom space and state of the art equipment. This observation stands as a metaphor for a theme on which I have been hammering for a little while. What has been constructed is not a church although that is how we commonly employ the term. Nor would it be true to say that the church was reduced to debris. Church was the collective people inside the older structure and Church continues to be that group of people and whoever also joins them inside the new design. It's difficult for us to move away from language that by weight of habit associates church with physical structure, but we should make the effort. We do not go to church. We are church. We don't attend church. We live as church. Does it make any difference? I believe it does. Otherwise, like a fantasy we could say, if we build it (the church), they (people) will come. What we should say is, if we are it (the church) they (the people) will come. It is not where we go but who we are that is important. If we live as church, God's family, Christ's bride, a ransomed flock with a divine shepherd, then by exposure to us, others whom the LORD wants to call will hear his voice. 

THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE

THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE

A malaise in today's church, disabling
Faintness, mood swings, low resistance
The condition warrants her attention,
She disregards the diagnosis.

I told you there was something wrong.
The bride lives in an aberrant world,
Enticements streaming to disrupt her
Faithfulness is on the line.

From what's known to what is not
Analogy speaks to her of marriage
She has been violating vows
And he says softly "I'm your husband."

The resource ignored far too often,
God's Spirit resident within her
Can make her all that she should be
The noble bride he came to save.

© Ron Unruh, July 3, 2015