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. 

BIOLOGICAL CHURCH

I mention 'church' numerous times during these recent articles, which seems peculiar when I observe that Jesus mentioned 'church' only twice. Once, he promised that he would build his church. Another time he advised his followers how to deal with the person who was ruining his church either by intent or accident. We spend far more time talking about planting churches, growing churches, administering them, governing them, managing them, renewing them, upgrading their health, enabling them to survive, than Jesus himself did. I believe this is because we have either inherited or opted into church systems that compel us to take so much responsibility to ourselves that Jesus intends to be naturally biotic.

I came to faith through a church, grew to maturity in a church, received what I believe was a directive from God to set my art ambitions aside to train for pastoral ministry. I was habituated to Sunday school and Sunday morning church services with choir, modest congregational hymn singing, pastoral prayer, offering, preached message and a closure consisting of a hymn and a benediction. Church also required Wednesday evening prayer meeting attendance and group gatherings like Christian Service Brigade and then Youth meetings. My pastoral training equipped me to administer church in accordance with this format. I knew nothing else and neither did any of my parishioners. I pastored four churches over a 34-year span of time and served as president of a church denomination for six years.

I was passionate, devoted to my role as a leader of others, often older than myself. I attended conferences and seminars to learn principles and skills to help me more effectively encourage others to do those measurable results that equated with spiritual maturity. I was busy, sometimes so busy that I had no time for neighbours and I neglected my own spiritual nutrition. Small wonder that in three of the four churches I pastored, crises surfaced to bring an end to my service in each location. Something is definitely questionable about this institution we call Christ's church when Jesus' life and behaviour is missing.

Don't tell me it's part of the territory and that I should get used to it. I am so far past that cop-out. Jesus never fails. Jesus' life is pure, righteous, kind, gentle, forgiving, generous, loving. His life in people changes them and they reflect him. This is Jesus' church. Those are the people with whom I want to spend time, with whom I want to celebrate redemption through Christ, with whom I wish to worship our Father, who give me liberty to be me, permission to explore questions, inspire me to be passionate about living like Jesus. I think that some of these people to whom I allude do actually live within the institutional church, and some have left the organized church. I need them. I believe that they need me. We are church. When I sit with my pastor I feel more a part of 'church' than when I sit with the Sunday crowd. When I sit with my non-attending believing friends, I know I am part of the church. When my children and their children come to my house, praise God, I know we are church. Visiting my brothers this summer, whom I have not seen personally in three years, I am easily aware that we are church. Jesus is in our midst. We welcome him. He is our life and our hope and our aspiration and our reason for living.

CHURCH AS BUSINESS

Church today is increasingly business–like. Scripture makes no case for the gathering of Christians being a business. We call these gatherings churches, and collectively they are ‘The Church.’ That collective is described in scripture by terms like body, bride, family, and spiritual house. It is understood in the Bible as a living organism of which Jesus Christ is the head. But church today is increasingly business–like.