Be Church

When we were little, many of us learned the song that said, “The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The Church is not a resting place. The church is the people”. But how many of us actually live up to this understanding of church?

The term church has come to mean many other things than what many “church people” understand it to be. Many people think of “church” as an organization that gathers on Sunday mornings and perhaps at other times for potluck dinners or rummage sales, or simply as a building. However, there is much more to being church than this.

The church is the people. Even more than that, the church is the people who are devoted to living out a life of faith in Jesus Christ in community every day, every hour, every minute.  “I am the church. You are the church. We are the church together.”

Relationality

In God’s very nature we find relationship. God as Trinity is three persons united in a holy mystery. As creatures made in God’s image, we reflect God’s nature and are also persons united through relationship with God and one another. Therefore the church is not just made up of individuals living out their faith in isolation. Members of the church are individuals in relationship with others. As a specific incarnation of the body of Christ, living in a particular location, our church will also be in relationship with our neighbors.

Transformation

As we live out our faith 24/7, we believe that Christ will be present to all those who we encounter. As individuals are touched by the love of Christ through the Holy Spirit, we believe that their lives will be transformed. As we faithfully live out our calling to Be Church, we believe that our lives, the lives of those we touch, and the community in which we are located will be transformed in order to experience life as Jesus promised us.

Truth or truth

Although Christians have often claimed that there is one absolute Truth, the reality has been that Christians have argued for centuries about different truths that they hold. We do not ascribe to one absolute set of propositions about God that we call the Truth. In fact many things can be said about God that are true and untrue at the same time.

We believe that God, not something that we say about God, is the Truth. Jesus, as the living Word of God is the Truth. Therefore, the Truth is someone to be in relationship with rather than principles to assent to.