"Church:" Not Just for Sunday Any More

 

Billy Graham, in The Journey, writes, 

“Nowhere in the New Testament does 'church' refer to a church building, since there were none in the first century (Christians mostly met in homes).”  

He goes on to point out that, in the Bible, 

“Church” meant “a local group of Christians, or all the Christians in a particular city or area.” The word “church” in the Bible “refers to the company of all believers, who are spiritually united by their relationship with Christ. The church isn’t just a local congregation, it includes all believers everywhere...” 

So this begs the question: how did we get to where we are today where that one hour on Sunday morning (or three times a week) has come to define us as believers and take precedence in our walk? 

What would happen if people were to stand back and stop looking at church as having an address and a program and saw it as all believers? 

What would happen if  "church" was understood as a body of individuals who work, eat, play, pray, travel and go to school every day of the week, and with whom we interact on a daily basis (maybe not even knowing they, too, are people of faith?) 

Would we act in our daily behavior with the reverence, chivalry and good will that we do on Sunday mornings? Would we live as though we are in church all of the time? Because, as a body of believers called the church, that is exactly where we are all of the time?

Our limited contemporary definition of church has constrained us and at the same time let us off the hook. 

It constrains us by keeping us from interacting with others who “don’t attend my church,” and it lets us off the hook by leading us into the false assumption that “church”—the building and Sunday morning congregation—is where we live our faith. 

So, the thinking goes, if we can pull off living our faith for one hour (or three times a week), then we can go home with our families, and to work and school on Monday, and never have to think about living our faith again until we head, once more, into the church building. 

Year, after year, after year, after year, that is often how it goes. 

But if that’s the case, we’ve got church all wrong.

Copyright Barb Harwood