Probably the best thing I learned at the DTC conference I went to last weekend was the following:
I belong to the church.
What I mean is this. I’ve often felt as if I don’t belong to the particular church I am “going to.” I would find myself saying, for one reason or another, “These are not my people” (see the song These Are Not My People by Johnny Rivers). I would feel like I didn’t fit in, or left out, or misunderstood or whatever. People weren’t interested in what I was interested in, and they didn’t approach God the way I did.
Notice, however, that I talked about “going to” church. That is, church is some kind of activity, or event, that I attend. This is an unfortunate way to look at things, but the use of the word “church” to describe what we Christians do makes it easy to make this mistake.
But the Bible doesn’t actually use a word equivalent to what we mean by “church” when it describes Christians meeting. It uses a word a lot more like “gathering” or “assembly.” And as such, it’s easy to see that any gathering or assembly is constituted by the people who make it up. A gathering is not some independent thing that exists apart from those who gather. If you have a gathering and nobody shows up, then you didn’t have a gathering.
The church is like that. It consists of the people who are there. In fact, as we are often reminded, “where two or three of you are gathered in my name, there I am among you” (said by Jesus).
We often talk and think as if church is a particular thing that happens on Sunday, with an “order of service,” a pastor and sermon, “worship music” and so on. But that is not true. It must be said clearly and I say it again: church is not the organized event that happens on Sunday. Church is —and only is — the people who gather in the name of Jesus. And whenever it happens, that gathering becomes an outpost of that spiritual entity “rooted in time and eternity” known as the Church — the body of Christ.
So the fellowship group you have at work is the church. The prayer group you have at school is the church. The little Bible study you have is the church. And this is as much the church as anything that happens on Sunday.
This is essential to understand and drill into your thinking about the church.
But the above is just an elaborate way of saying the following:
You are the church.
Note that in the above statement, the word “you” is plural. My son, in his talk this week, pointed out that it would be more accurate to say “Y’all are the church.” As Paul puts it, “You [plural] are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
So … all of the sudden we see that, far from being an organization that I attend, the church is an organism that I am a part of. In other words, it doesn’t matter how I feel or what I think. If I am gathered with my fellow Christians, we are the church and I am a member of that church, that gathering.
Now this is not just juggling with semantics. I am actually saying something deeper than “two or three people make a gathering.” In fact, just putting some people in the same room does not constitute the church.
Instead, I’m saying that the church is a supernatural organism brought into being by the Spirit of Christ. I am part of the church because I share that common Spirit. And notice that the organism exists on a supernatural plane. It is not brought about by any natural unity. It’s not because I feel one with the people that we become the church. It’s not what we share in common or our sense of understanding that makes us one. Instead, we are one on a spiritual plane because the Spirit has already made us one.
It is an invisible spiritual reality but it is as factual as the law of gravity. We are the church — whether we like it or not. I am a member of the gathering of which I make a part, even if I don’t feel like it.
But the way this spiritual reality becomes actualized is by faith. I must believe in the reality that the Spirit creates, and seek to live it out. I must be the thing that the Spirit has made me: a member of the Body of Christ.
Now here is where the irony comes in. The very fact that I feel different from the rest of the body is a sign that I am part of a body. A mass of blue-green algae consists of a bunch of identical cells. But a body consists of a differentiated set of organs that cooperate to perform the functions of the body.
If I felt I was just like everyone else in the Body, then there would be no Body. As Paul says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?…If all were a single member, where would the body be?” (1 Corinthians 12:17,19). It is essential that there be distinctions among the Body if it is to function as a body. To repeat, the fact that I “feel different” is a sign that I am part of a Body!
To sum up, then, whenever Christians are gathered together, they are a church. That is a fact, a spiritual reality. But it must be brought into visibility by our living it out. The reality of the church remains unfruitful unless it ceases to be invisible and starts to have a real impact. “All men will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.”
But because the church is a Body and not an undifferentiated mass, it requires that we be different. The differences of which I am so conscious are not a tragedy; they are the thing that makes me a functional part of the Body.
By faith I see myself as part of the Body and by faith I see my differences as valuable to the full functioning of that Body — the Body of Christ.