Don't Go to Church

I am composing this week's Life Matters from a hotel room just outside of Houston.  Mrs. Sweetie and I are enjoying a week of vacation celebrating our 28th wedding anniversary.  This morning, I was the guest preacher at a church in this area where one of my long-time friends is pastor. Just to prove that I am still on vacation, I preached in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt.  I also had on long pants and socks for the first time since July 3, so it was a special occasion.

My friend is the founding pastor of this church that they started with 12 couples 9 years ago.  They have a wonderful church family of several hundred, most of whom had no prior experience in church.  As a result, these folks don't have a lot of pretense.

Their church motto is, "Don't go to church.  Be the church."  I love it.  As a professional observer and encourager of church life (that does not speak of expertise, but of "profession"), I have noticed that a common struggle of churches is their identity in the community.  One of the questions I want to encourage churches to ask is, "When our community sees or hears  the name of our church, what does that mean to them?"  Is it the little white church on the corner?  Or the red brick church on the hill?  Maybe it's the hundred year old building down the gravel road or the modern complex in the suburbs.

But what would it be like if we weren't identified by the place we gather, but by the way the gathering affects the way we live once we are dispersed?  What we were known as those who are feeding the hungry, loving the outcasts, and making our whole community a better place to live just because we live here.  What would it be like if people saw our public gatherings as safe places where hurting and helpless people are met with the compassion of Jesus?

You don't have to go to Houston to find churches like that.  They are in our neighborhoods.  Some of them have really nice meeting places and some of them don't, but that is not what matters most.  Some of them have figured out that "church" is an identity, not a location.  And that makes our communities better.

A few years ago, I was struck by Proverbs 11:11.  "Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed."  The primary focus is on blessing with words, but when those words are accompanied by action (being the church), the blessing is multiplied.  And when the church makes an intentional choice to bless the community, those who have been wounded, and even broken, by life begin to see that healing and wholeness are possible as they meet with people who act like the Savior they worship.

I can't wait to gather with the church next Sunday.