Video Message – The Church is not a Building

June 28, 2020 

Message:  The Church Is Not a Building  

Scripture:  Ephesians 4:7, 11-16

Music:  Rosemary Nettrouer 

Flowers:  Mary Hiebert 

Good morning and welcome!   

Thank you to Mary Hiebert for the flowers and Rosemary Nettrouer for the music.  

• If you have announcement or prayer requests, please feel free to add them as comments on the Facebook page. 

Announcements 

• We are live streaming on Facebook and not gathering at the church for worship, at least through July 5.   We are talking about reopening on July 12, and a final decision about that will likely be made this week.  
• Please feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link on your page.   
• Among church activities this week
  • We are hosting Family Promise this week, in shelter-in-place mode, which means we are providing meals to a homeless family every night.   
  • The Transition Team meets Monday morning, with Colin Saxton joining from Oregon via Zoom.   The main topic will be the all-church retreat, now scheduled for the last weekend in August.   What will your role be in our transition?  

Prayer concerns   

• Cliff Loesch is recovering after extensive neck surgery, wearing a neck brace and receiving ongoing antibiotic treatments. 
• Greg Newby is between chemo-therapy treatments, and he and Rhonda have gone fishing. 

• Dan Schuster’s tests went well on Friday, and he should be getting results early this week.  
• Gordon Smith is settling in after coming home from skilled care facility following brain surgery.  Son Gill helped get the computer set up on the main floor, and Gordon is figuring out how to use a walker in a house not made with that in mind.  

• Our church during this time of transition – may we find clarity and energy for the tasks at hand and the decisions we will need to make as we find our way forward.   May we find ways to use our assets wisely and well.  

Prayer 

God our maker, we give you thanks for life and light, for rain, for flowers, for people to love and who love us.   

We open ourselves to receive from you health and joy and peace.  

We pray for those in our circle of care.   

We pray for our church.  

We pray for people in our neighborhood, in our city, our state and country.    

May we find ways to be instruments of justice and peace in our world.  

Message  

We live in a strange time.  We haven’t met for worship as a congregation since March 8.  That’s roughly two and a half months, fifteen weeks.   During that time, we have been offering online worship in order to both maintain continuity in the life of the Meeting and to be responsible about our safety during the time of the pandemic.  

Some have commented that they are amazed at how connected they feel through the live streamed worship.  Others have said we have to get back to the way things were as soon as possible.   Some are eager to get back to worship, while others are certain that they will not attend until worship is an hour long or until a vaccine for the virus is widely available.     

In April, two pastors in Kansas brought a legal suit, “challenging Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s executive order to include churches in the state’s 10-person public-gathering limit.”  At issue were these claims, according to a news story:  

The lawsuit accuses Kelly’s executive order of first-amendment violations, including encroachments on the right to assemble, right to freely exercise faith (with the limit on gathering together for corporate prayer) and on free-speech. A fourth count in the lawsuit argues the order is a violation of the Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act. (https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Churches-sue-Kansas-governor-over-executive-order-limiting-gathering-sizes-569715921.html). 

Around the same time, I remember some hearing church leaders say that for churches not to gather for worship would be disobeying God because Hebrews 10:25 counsels us not to neglect to meet together.   

One conservative Christian blogger countered that idea and wrote, 

It’s because we have a backward, businesslike view of the church that many see attendance “every time the doors are open” as the sign of faithfulness. Church is the location and/or the event that happens on Sunday, so their participation in “church” is centered on attendance. In the New Testament, the sign of a faithful Christian is the fruit they bear. 

Obviously a fruit bearing Christian is going to want to worship God [and] gather with their church family, …. But that faithful attendance is a natural byproduct of a truly converted heart. It is not the end in itself.

On the other hand, there are those who are there “every time the doors are open” who bear no fruit whatsoever. If we get a person to attend regularly through guilt trips and threats of hell but they don’t love the Lord and don’t bear any fruit, we haven’t accomplished anything. This was why Jesus so heavily emphasized the … proposition that we should serve God from the inside out rather than merely performing external acts with a cold heart (https://www.focuspress.org/2020/03/17/misunderstanding-forsaking-the-assembly/).

For this author, showing up in a particular building on a particular day of the week isn’t what faithfulness looks like.  Instead, the mark of a faithful life is good fruit.  

And, during this pandemic, my friends and ministry colleagues have often reminded one another that being the church isn’t about gathering in a particular building on Sunday mornings.    

Here are some of the memes I have seen: 

• Church is not a building or location.  Church is a fellowship of people.  So don’t go to church.  Be the church. 
• The church is not the building, it’s the people.  It’s not just the gathering, it’s the scattering.  
• Church – a human connection of love, not a building; a lifestyle, not a weekly activity; an act of service, not a service to attend. 

Yes, we like gathering in a beautiful space on a Sunday morning.  But if that’s all there is, that’s a problem.     

Some of this kind of thinking about the church has gone into a Quaker understanding of the church.   My friend Phil Gulley used to be the pastor of Irvington Friends, in Indianapolis.  Like many churches, this one had a sign near the road, with a place for a changing message.   For quite a while, Phil’s sign had a message something like this:   Dissatisfied with organized religion?  Try Quakers.   😊  

As Wil Cooper discussed a Quaker view of the church in his book, A Living Faith, he began by laying out four objections or complaints about the church as early Quakers found it in the 1600s in England:

1. Friends objected to making salvation the function of the clergy by the preaching of the Word [with a capital W] and the administration of the sacraments, in place of the direct action of the Holy Spirit to spiritually transform lives. 
2. They objected to restricting ministry and the priesthood to a particular class of people ordained to a particular office.  They believed that potentially everyone can be a minister of Christ and receive a gift in ministry. 
3. They objected to the church’s lack of concern for practical righteousness.  They believed that living in the will of God was possible here and now by the transforming grace and power of God.  Thus the Christian is called to live as if the kingdom were already here. 
4. They objected to public taxation (payment of church tithes) for the support of the church.  Rather, they believed in religious voluntarism and a free Gospel ministry. (p. 73) 

Salvation doesn’t require clergy, but it does require openness to the work of the Spirit.  We are all called and gifted for ministry of one kind or another.  God is in the business of transforming lives here and now.  Give freely of what God has given.  

Cooper continued with four more positive perspectives: 

1. The church is a gathered holy community whose purpose … is to carry the Gospel into all the world.  …  
2. The church is a fellowship of people gathered by Christ and made alive by his Spirit.  The church is not, therefore, a building or an institution bound by the organizational structure of time and place.  
3. The chief mark of the true church is righteousness and obedience to Christ.  Christ, the head, orders the church in worship, ministry, mission, and service.  
4. The principle of unity in the church is the Light of Christ and the Spirit of God.  As all seek the Light [with a capital L] they shall be brought into a common sense of unity.  (pp. 73-74) 

For Quakers, the church is a holy community bringing good news, a Spirit-enlivened people, a people obedient to God and following Jesus, listening to God and to one another in order to find the way forward.   

How are we doing with all that?  

Here’s where the scripture for this morning comes into play, from Ephesians 4 (NRSV).  

I … beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.  

⁷ But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. … 

¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

That’s what the church is – a people called to love one another with humility and gentleness, a people gifted for ministry, a people growing into maturity and wholeness. 

University Friends Church is meant to be a holy community with a God-given purpose, to be salt and light in the world.  University Friends Church is not this building, nor is it the set of 18 committees that we’ve been working with.  If it is a church worthy of the name, it is a spiritual fellowship enlivened by the Spirit of God.  

If its’ not that – if it’s not a spiritual fellowship enlivened by the Spirit of God – it is an empty shell going through the motions.  

University Friends Church is called to righteousness and obedience to God.  What does God want of us?  We need to spend serious time figuring that out and then living it out.  Let us seek and find.   

Two sets of queries: 

• Who are we called to be?  
  • What is our mission (unique purpose or reason for existing) as a faith community? 
  • What values (common commitments by which we will live, work, play tougher) shape and direct our life together? 
  • What is God’s vision (artist’s rendition of us faithfully living out our mission) for us as a community discerned in light of our understanding of Scripture, the leading of the Spirit, and historic faith commitments? 
  • How are we communicating/teaching/reinforcing these among our members and with newcomers? 
• What has God called us to do in our culture context today in our community?  
  • What is the specific geographic, social, cultural context in which we are located?  What are the needs of the people around us?  What issues are unique to our community?  
  • What is going on during this season of our history?  What changes/issues/opportunities can we see appearing on the horizon?  
  • With our mission and vision in mind, to what ministry is God calling us in this time and place?  How do our unique gifts, strengths, call and God-given concerns intersect with the needs around us?   (from “The Local Church as a Missional Community,” an Everence handout) 

Be the church, urges one denomination. 

If we are the church, we work to protect God’s creation, to care for people most in need, to accept and offer forgiveness, to face our complicity in racism and injustice, to stand with those who don’t have the resources to stand on their own, to share out of our abundance, to open our arms to all kinds of people, to live in the light of God’s love and joy.  

When we are doing those things, when we are living that life, we are being the church.   

Open worship 

Please join me as we enter a time of open worship, communion after the manner of Friends.   If you feel led to contribute, please do so via comments on the Facebook page.

We are meeting in person and also streaming our sermons on Facebook at 10:00 AM CST. Watch live: 
https://www.facebook.com/universityfriendschurch/

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