I Do Church Do You?

With the continued existence of the Church being a subject for both Church people and opponents to the church, it seems like a good time to add to the conversation.

There will always be a place for the Church simply because of the presence of followers of Christ on earth.  It is not merely matter of defence of the church but it is more a matter of followers who congregate under the name of the Master will be known by the Masters name. 

This is one of the problems of semantics.  We inevitably use the one word for a multitude of scenarios.  A Church is a building, the people who gather in that building, the people who follow the Christ, and so forth.  The Anti Church fraternity have the same sort of groupings, or characterisations, that they see by their observations. 

I remember some time ago a young man who when I walked into the place where I was working and asked him how his weekend had gone.  This fellow when I saw him replied with “bloody Christians” to my enquiry.  It turned out he had gone into town on the Saturday and had been assaulted by Bible carrying Christians all the way down the main street then he remembered that I too was one of the “bloody Christians” and I accepted the title of Christian.

This brings us to the issue of the “Church”.  We need to get an idea of what Church means to us. And then work that idea to the maximum.  For some members of the church being a Christian is being a member of a particular brand of church and little more.  These members of the church if they were asked would have difficulty being convicted in a court of law of being a Christian.

For others yet they live out their faith 7 days a week but rarely set foot in the church where their membership is.  We call these people “Missionaries” because they are soldiers for the faith in a country not of their own. 

What is the place for the Church, now and into the future?  Jesus called the Church “His bride”. He also identified the people that His Church was to respond to “the poor the homeless, those who were disabled in spirit or body and the prisoners of any type”.  He said basically that how we treated these amounted to treating him in the same way.

The comment He made in the end of Mathews Gospel about going out to spread the message He had given the believers was about introducing the “Kingdom of God” to the peoples of the world.

Unfortunately the people of the church seem to have forgotten the message that Jesus endowed to His people, and the people of the world see the Church as a social club for do-gooders.

There will always be a church, even in the areas where Christians are persecuted, the persecuted church it can be said has more reason to live out its faith.  The Church where the Church is tolerated by society as a whole has a greater need to sort out what Jesus wants of it also how best to make a difference for the Kingdom and also the people we come into contact with.

You are the Church and I am the Church together we form the body of Faith and we must work out how to make that difference in the people we connect with.