Church...What is it really?

Verse of the Week:

1 Corinthians 6:19  "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own."

Church...What is it really?

Growing up, I learned so much about the Lord through my parents.  If anyone had an impact on teaching me about Jesus, it was my Mom and Dad.  They displayed their love for God through their actions on a daily basis.  I remember our evening Bible studies before bedtime as a child.  Dad would read from our picture Bible, and I remember looking forward to seeing the colorful pictures and reading about Abraham, David, Moses, Ruth, Esther, Elijah, Jesus, and Paul.  I remember waking up Saturday mornings and walking into my parent's bedroom seeing them engrossed in a Bible study together.  I remember our prayers we said at meal times and outside of mealtimes.  I remember daily talks we had about our Savior.  I knew who was number one in my parent's lives, Jesus.  When I was around 10-11 years old, I remember that we stopped going to church.  People were extremely critical towards my parents for making that choice.  I remember noticing it more as I grew older.  People would judge my family thinking that we were wrong not to go to church without ever knowing why we stopped.  I remember a pastor in particular who shunned my own mother because she didn't take me to church.  Shame on people for being so quick to judge and not truly loving with Christ's love.  

You see, my siblings and I all have a hearing loss, making it hard to listen in large group settings such as a church.  Try reading a pastor's lips from 20 feet away, and you will get what I mean.  Try keeping up with a group conversation in Sunday school without the use of your ears, and you will quickly find it downright impossible.  Try listening hard all week at school and then going to church and listening some more.  It is exhausting.  People have never realized how hard my siblings and I have had to work at listening.  Therefore, my parents made a difficult decision to start having church at home.  Every week we would watch Christian pastors on TV such as Adrian Rogers and Charles Stanley.  Their broadcasts were closed captioned.  For those of you that do not know what closed captioning is, the words that a person is saying on TV appear at the bottom of the screen (just think about today's subtitles on movies).  I grew more in that setting than I ever did at church as a child.  I would take notes as we watched the broadcasts, and then my family and I would sit and discuss what we had watched afterwards.  Sometimes the discussions would last for hours and were one of the highlights of my week.  I grew in the Lord and learned to love Him deeply during that time of my life.

I learned long ago, that Christianity isn't about a church building, but about a personal relationship with Christ Jesus.  The purpose of this blog entry is to explain what church really is.  This is NOT to put down the church in any way.  I myself as an adult attend church and find it beneficial in my walk with Christ.  However, I have heard following said by people:

• The church is God's house.
• To show your kids how important God is, you MUST go to church every Sunday.
• Don't neglect fellowship with other Christians, you need to have a church in order to do so.
• It is impossible to love Jesus and not love the Church. 

Do I agree or disagree with the above statements?  Well it depends....

First off, I cannot talk about the above statements without giving some background of the word "church" and how churches actually first came about.  The word church in the Bible NEVER referred to a building, temple, or house of God, rather the New Testament verses that use the word Church comes from the word Ekklesia (mentioned 114 times in the New Testament). Ekklesia always refers to an assembly of people, never a building. As my pastor has put it, a church is a body of believers.  In early Christianity, Christians met in each other's homes, not in an official building.  This went on for 300 plus years after Christ's resurrection.  When the Roman emperor, Constantine came to power, he wanted to promote Christianity and did so by constructing the building of several churches.  While Constantine was known as the first Christian emperor, he still clung to his pagan beliefs and used some of his pagan ideas while constructing the church.  He wanted the Christians to have their own sacred building just like the Jews and pagans had their own temples.  He named his churches after saints just as pagans named their temples after their gods.  He declared Sunday to be a day of rest for all religions to honor his Sun god, Mithras.  By the way, the Jew's Sabbath was on Saturday, never on Sunday.  

There were many more pagan ideas that were implemented into the church during the 4th and 5th centuries. Most if not many ideas for the church are man made, not from the Bible.  (To find more information about this topic, refer to the book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna.)  The point I am trying to make, is that the church was never initially a building but rather turned into such a place as history has shown.

Whether I agree or disagree with the above statements soley depends on the definition of "church."  Is the church a building or body of believers? By understanding that the church is a body of believers, it changes my view of church.
So lets discuss the above statements I put down:

1. The church is God's house.
Perhaps you have heard the familiar phrase on Sunday, "Welcome to the house of God!" or "God's spirit is moving in this church today!"  Does God truly dwell in a church building?  Is the church His home?  Lets read 1 Corinthians 6:19

"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own."

God's spirit resides inside of you.  You are his home.  When you became a Christian and recieved Jesus into your heart, God's spirit came to live inside of you.  If you refer to a Church as a body of believers, then the above statement is true, God's spirit resides in the body of believers.  If you believe that God resides in a building, then I would have to disagree with you. Is it possible for God's spirit to be in a church building?  Only if a body of believers are present.

2. To show your kids how important God is, you must go to church every Sunday.
If you have read my story above, you will quickly find out that my family did not go to church every Sunday, but I still learned how important Jesus is.  He is EVERYTHING to me. What does the Bible say about bringing your children to church...lets look at some scripture.

Proverbs 22:6  Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Notice that none of the scriptures say anything about taking a child to church each Sunday, but rather it talks about training a child on the ways of God.  Can church be a way to train your child, ABSOLUTELY! But are there other alternatives to teaching your child about Jesus? YES, which I hope you saw from my own history of learning about Christ. You can take your child to church building every Sunday, but if you are not showing them and teaching them about God's love during the week, then are they truly being trained up in the way they should go?  Actions speak louder than the words on the pulpit.  Are your actions reflecting those of Christ?

3. Don't neglect fellowship with other Christians, you need to have a church in order to do so.

Many of us have heard of this verse from Hebrews 10:

25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

I agree, we shouldn't neglect meeting and fellowshiping with other Christians. Remember, the definition of church determines whether I agree with the above statement or not. If it means a gathering of believers, then I agree completely.  However, is the church building the only way to do it?  No. 

Another thought, do we truly fellowship with Christians on Sunday?  We go into the service and maybe introduce ourselves to a few newcomers that are visiting the church; we wave and say the classic, "Hi, how are you." and then we sit down and listen to the pastor preach the rest of the service.  Are we really meeting and discussing the word of God with other Christians?  Can church be a source or way to find other Christian friends and fellowship with them outside of church? Absolutely!   But is it the only way? No.  I never felt like I neglected meeting with Christians growing up because my whole family were Christians, and we met and discussed the word of God on more days than just Sunday.  My family was my church or gathering of believers.

4. It is impossible to love Jesus and not love the Church.
If the church is being referred to as a body of believers, then I agree with this statement.  If a person is saying they love Jesus but hate their fellow brother/sister in Christ then how can the love of Christ truly be in them.  1 John 4:20 says:

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.


It is impossible to love Jesus and not love his followers; however, there are people that have problems with the church building, traditions, and the structure that churches run by, but not the believers themselves.  But there are also people that love the church traditions and expect others to love the same and are critical if they do not.  Loving your fellow believers is more important than the building and its traditions.

Church is a gathering of believers!

I wrote this blog, to help give people a better understanding towards others who love the Lord but do not attend church in a building.  I myself now attend church in a building and find it beneficial, but I do not judge those who do not attend a church building themselves. I used to be one of them.  While a church building can be a beautiful resource in growing in our relationship with God, we should be careful in making it a hard core biblical doctrine, because the Bible says NOTHING about going to a building every Sunday to worship. If anything, the church building was built upon pagan ideas and is not Biblically based as oppose to popular belief.   The church is every single believer in Christ that meets together, whether in a home, coffee shop, or a church building.  The body of believers is not just contained in one building, but believers are everywhere.  Let's not judge our fellow believers, but rather be quick to love, support, and help each other with our walk in Christ whether it is in our homes, at Walmart, at a party, during work, or in a church building.  The church is a gathering of people.