An arsonist set a fire that gutted the church where we attended when I was young. I was to learn in subsequent years that a) church fires are not that infrequent, and b) they can have an upside, in that they tend to burn into the souls of their members (those who are listening) some realities about the differences between the church (the institution) and the ecclesia (the actual bride of Christ).
In an article in the February/March 2018 issue of Presbyterians Today, “Idolizing our worship spaces,” pastor Richard Hong writes about a phenomena that occurred after a fire in his church and their subsequent move into other meeting places: “In all of the time that we have not been in our traditional sanctuary, we have been growing.”
It is a known fact that a church building automatically limits the number of people who can be served by a church, as its walls will contain only so many. So remove those walls, and growth can occur. But the destruction of the physical plant actually makes way for more consequential growth than physical numbers … true spiritual growth of the ecclesia that may be amongst those who inhabit those walls. Hong continues:
“The biggest danger that I felt we faced was that rebuilding would distract us from our core mission. We were determined to stay focused on being the church, not building one.”
Here, though as a pastor he almost assuredly fails to fully realize it, Hong has stumbled on the dichotomy between the church and the ecclesia. When he speaks of “being the church,” no doubt he is referencing what most call the “church universal,” which is actually no church at all but is the bride of Christ – the ecclesia itself. This effort to salvage the ecclesia from the institution that was cultured to swallow it up is the irrepressible reaction of man’s spirit seeking to be in relationship with God and to be what God designed us to be – His family (a far more accurate descriptor for the true meaning of ecclesia than is “church”). Jesus built His ecclesia; men do not need to build it anymore but should, rather, focus on BEing rather than DOing.
Hong asks a thought-provoking question: “What is the sanctuary’s role? Our previous sanctuary was beautiful, but so beautiful it was imposing.” … “[T]he informality of the gym created a more relaxed setting that is very attractive.”
Why is a simple, plain gymnasium more attractive to a gathering of the bride of Christ than an ornate “sanctuary”? Simple: because the ornate constructions of man can be only a distraction from what is truly the temple of the living God – the individual physical bodies of the members of the Body of Christ. God does not dwell anymore in buildings made with hands. He left the temple when Jesus died; the sign of His exodus was the tearing of the temple veil in two. So why, then, do men go to such extremes to try to build a building or a “sanctuary” where God will appear, or seem to appear more so, to us?
“What will future worship look like?” Hong asks. “Our answer is that we don’t know. … A guiding principle is that we don’t want our successors, decades from now, wondering why we locked ourselves into a design that is impeding them.”
That is one of the many questions that drive this series of articles. Why, indeed? Why have we allowed men to stuff God into a box … to limit His idea of the bride of Christ, the family of God, to something so crude and so crass as to permit mere men to dare to present themselves as God’s representatives on earth who speak from within themselves with, they insist, the very voice of God? If it weren’t so common, its crassness would cry out for crucifixions!
Jesus Christ did not build a church; He built His ecclesia – His family, His bride – and MEN came along and said, We think we can do it better. Those MEN built the whole idea of church, and when a church burns, THAT is what burns – the physical manifestation of it, anyway.
Hong concludes: “Losing our sanctuary led us to do things that we could have done anyway. You don’t need a fire to ask hard questions.”
That’s what this column series is aimed at invoking – hard questions.