To be or not to be. Is that the question?

I just finished reading an article on innovative church movements in North America.  Unfortunately from almost the first sentence it was apparent that I was in different place than the author.  As with anything I read, I eat the meat and spit out the bones, and this article certainly had plenty of meat, but it just surprised me how even the most cutting edge of innovators in the church world still often miss some of the most basic of innovations .  It may have been simply semantics, but the article started out by saying “in our postmodern culture finding innovative ways to do church is essential” While I agree with the point being made, I think it reflects a bit of skewed doctrine regarding the church, for If we are “doing” church, it will inevitably end up just being one of the things on our ever increasing list of things “to do”.  I understand this now more than ever, for I have just ended a 40 year run at doing church.  It involved membership in and association with nine different organizations of people that were all doing church. At each location whether I was an “attender, member, or pastor” each organization had its membership rules and expectations, its organizational structures, and systems.  In the best of scenarios these things were set in place to move people through the system in the most efficient way so that the people could accomplish the purpose of the organization.    In the worst of scenarios they reflected the shortcomings and weaknesses of the leader who put them in place, often a leader who has been gone for some time, but whose influence still permeates the organization because change is the most resisted thing in the lives of virtually everyone I know.  

One of the primary things that I am trying to keep at the forefront of the work that I oversee is that we don’t do church we are The Church.  Things we do are temporary.  They have a starting point and ending point.  Whether events, services, or ministries, we do them for a period of time (Sundays, or Wednesdays) and then go back to the rest of our lives.  But we as Christians are the Church not merely members of a church but the composition of The Church itself.  We, who have come to Christ, are a house made up of living stones being built by the Lord as we grow in maturity and in our numbers.   The “modern” church for the most part has shed the false doctrine of the building being the church, so we no longer go “to the church”, but we have adopted an almost as problematic doctrine of “doing church” which will have to be shed in order for us to truly accomplish what the Lord had in mind for us in the beginning.  As I mentioned before it may just be semantics, people may just be used to using certain terms, and the structures of their organizations may well reflect the living communal nature of the church, but I have always been a proponent of the concept that you can tell what we believe by what we say, not what we say we believe but by what we say,  so take a few minutes as you read this to ask the Lord, The Head of the church if your actions reflect a life of doing church, or being the church.  As the head of the Church, He will be faithful to answer and to guide you to the take steps to assume your true identity as The Church.