A church I was part of finally bought a building. One person enthusiastically said, “We’re a real church now!” It made me wonder what we had been until that point. Apparently without a church building one cannot have a real church.
It seems to me that far too many people attend church. People think that entering a building on Sunday is what church is. I hope nobody in my congregation thinks they are attending church. I would be so sorely disappointed if they did!
As far as I am concerned, I do not attend church. I and those who meet with me are a church. You and I and the rest of us are living stones that make up a temple for God to inhabit. One could say that we ourselves are that church building.
If you think about it, this has a lot of implications. For one thing, we are portable. We are actually less like a temple than a tabernacle — a movable tent where God meets with us. When we are together — two or three gathered in the name of Jesus — we constitute the church, and Jesus meets with us. He is present and we encounter him through our faith that he keeps his promise to show up.
1 Peter 2:1-10 gives a great description of all this:
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For it stands in Scripture:
Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone, and
A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
So … when we come together, whether at GNG or somewhere else, we should take cognizance of the fact that we are more than just attendees at a social function. Our gathering constitutes a spiritual entity — the Body of Christ. What is more, if we are living stones then we matter — a missing stone weakens the whole construction.
But even more, there is the calling — we are called a royal priesthood, a people that are specially set aside for God. And we best demonstrate this by following Jesus’ command to love one another.