A Place or a People?

My mind raced to that simple question after a short discussion with a friend at church last Sunday. He was sharing with me how he was inviting co-workers to our church. He shared that he described our church as a place where people do more than go to church on Sundays, but that we are involved in life. I was pretty happy with his description. And my thoughts fell back to that simple question of identity, are we a place or a people. Recent history has answered that question for us and we have been formed in the midst of its answer. But does its answer live and breathe with he rich vitality of the gospel.

My own thinking on the subject was fertilized by the collection of essays entitled "Missional Church." Within its pages I discovered that during the Reformation the Reformers, in a desire to correct the wanderings of the church emphasized some "true marks" of the church. In an attempt to realign the church with Scripture they suggested that the true church is a place where the gospel is rightly preached, the sacraments are rightly administered and church discipline is exercised. And as the modern thought grew to embrace the autonomy of the individual and capitalism and consumerism rose to power in the west the church increasingly was viewed as "a place where certain things happened."

But does a this "place where" language accurately represent the scriptural call to go and make disciples. Now I am not suggesting that we sell off our church buildings, but maybe more how we think about our relationship to church and how we talk about our church. Think about how we talk about our churches (Missional Church, p.58). ...you "go to church" much the same way you might go to a store. You "attend" a church, the way you attend a school or theater. You "belong to a church" as you would a service club with its programs and activities." This language is often the way I speak of my church experience. But it has created the experience of "church hopping" where we shop churches to find which one serves us the best array of clerical delicacies.

But I'm increasingly finding this "place where" language devoid of the power that the gospel appears to bring in the writings of Paul and the acts of the apostles. The apostles seem to be gathering "a people who" will die to themselves and live for Christ..."a people who" will submit to another as to the Lord..."a people who" will give of their plenty to meet the needs of others. If our church is a place where certain things happen, then we might be missing the richness of alternative-community that the gospel can create when we are a people who are faithfully living out the gospel amongst one another.

Are we consumers shopping for a place where they play the best music, deliver the best sermon and look and dress just like us? Will we leave if the pastor says something we don't like or the elders make a decision we don't agree with? Then we go down the road to find another place where they don't do that.