A Church or The Church? – Greg Albrecht

A Church or The Church?

The popular definition of “church” as a brick and mortar building with tell-tale architectural features located on a piece of real estate representing an individual denomination with its unique dogmas, beliefs and practices is tailor-made to serve the mission and goals of Christ-less religion. In its popular iteration “church” is believed to be a place to which people go (attend) and to which many are said to belong.

While most believe God is everywhere many also believe that the best place, the holiest place, to find him is in a building specifically, as they think, dedicated and designed for him.

Jesus founded his church. It is his body. It is unlimited, unincorporated, incapable of confinement or incorporation and free of denominational walls. The church is the universal body of Christ which comes to us, by the grace of God. The church is who Jesus is and it is where He is. The church is not a limited or exclusive religious business franchise – it is the gift of God.

The church may or may not be found within the walls of a brick and mortar building where services and meetings are announced and provided at precise times. The church of Jesus Christ is universal – it exists outside of time and space. While we are free to drive our cars to the parking lot of a church building, Jesus, on the other hand, will always park in our driveway.

Jesus may or may not be in a building that identifies as a church. Signs outside buildings do not define or dictate Jesus’ presence and involvement. The church – the universal body of Christ – may or may not be involved with the faith and belief of a church.

Jesus may enter into physical entities that legally incorporate as a church, even if he is in effect uninvited by denominational walls whose doctrines and dogmas, upon close scrutiny and examination, safeguard against his presence. Even if Jesus may have recently or historically been ostracized, shown the door, excommunicated or disfellowshipped from an exclusive religious club that gathers inside a building, he still comes and goes as he wills.

Jesus is who and what the church is. Walls and boundaries of a church do not deny entry to Jesus, neither do physical or spiritual walls guarantee exclusivity and truth, as many claim. The church is one and the same as Jesus.

Sometimes A church works in harmony and in close concert with The church and sometimes A church does not. There is nothing spiritually inferior, wrong or substandard with Christ followers, by the grace of God, belonging to the church without maintaining membership in, attending or “darkening the door” of a building that claims to be a church.

In his book “Wishful Thinking” Frederick Buechner makes a critical distinction: The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God’s name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to church to look. The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God.

Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don’t even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap.

  • · If your church insists that membership in the body of Christ is dependent upon membership and baptism and acceptance of is doctrinal beliefs and practices, you may wish to give that audacious claim some further thought.
  • · If your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies, all the while leaving no stone unturned, making sure its “members” know who their enemies are, or should be, you may wish to consider whether the building you are sitting in identifies with “the” church.
  • · If your church will not allow anyone to come to the Lord’s Table unless they “believe as we do” you’re eating at the wrong spiritual table.
  • · If your church assures you that anyone not a part of its club will burn forever, in eternal conscious torment, because they have not followed its rules, and that such forever torture awaits those who fail to measure up because God loves them, you will do well to read more about the love of God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
  • · If a church has any relationship with the church it will not oppress or bully its followers and “members” with authoritarian guilt trips and shame should they fail to measure up to onerous, un-biblical and un-Christlike demands.
  • · If your church assures you that God dislikes, or even that he hates all the people you do, it is, as far, as east is from west and north from south, as one can be from the church.
  • · If your church is politically polarized, if it attempts to tell its constituents how and for whom to vote, then walk out the door … such a place may be a political action committee but it is not the church.
  • · If any given church building were destroyed by fire (or some other act of God) and if any congregation or denomination goes bankrupt and leaves the Christ-less religious business, the universal body of Christ will continue to be just as alive, vibrant and spiritually healthy as it has been for almost two thousand years. Of his universal spiritual body, Jesus said, the “gates of hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

In the Old Testament, even before the old covenant became operative, Aaron, Moses’ brother, gave the children of Israel a golden calf as they requested/demanded. Having just received freedom from the tyranny, oppression and enforced idolatry of Egypt, the Israelites reverted to idols they could see and revere other than God who delivered them, in large part because they could not see him.

Golden calves did not go away after the birth, life, teachings, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Golden calves are always popular within Christless religion, perhaps even inevitable. Instead of worshipping the God who is, was and will always be, religion makes its liturgy, holy images and icons, dogma and doctrines, beliefs and practices into an image of itself.

God made humans into his own image, and ever since, humans have done their best to remake Him into their own image and likeness. It is left for each of us to determine how closely any religious entity resembles a golden calf serving human interests and how closely a church resembles Jesus, who is the church.

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