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. 

OWNERSHIP - WE ARE THE CHURCH

I was a church pastor for over forty years. I have been retired for five years. I am wearing a new pair of glasses.

This past Sunday our pastor told us that we are not merely doing church. We are the church. We are a people group within the larger Church of Christ. Inherent in that statement and the theology of church to which it speaks, is the idea that being church concerns relationships, understanding, mutually concerned, selfless, altruistic and well intentioned relationships.

BORED AT CHURCH? THINKING OF CHANGING?

Mr. Bean 

I will dish out two credits as I start. One goes to Micah Lang who wrote the article ‘When Good Pastors Preach Boring Sermons,’ that I reference today from the Relevant magazine and the second kudo goes to Drew Unruh, an entrepreneurial nephew who asked me what my thoughts were on the article.

The content struck a chord with me because I have found myself doing the very thing for which I want to indict others.

SOMETHING IN CHURCH IS EMERGING ALRIGHT

Some analysts say that colossal transitions in the church occur about every 500 years. They also suggest that we may be in such a time. That implies displeasure in what the church presently is, or how it functions. Something is emerging in the church - dissatisfaction. Do you share this?