Bigger Than Sunday
The Church Beyond It’s Weekly Gathering
The disruption of COVID-19 has afforded many the opportunity to take stock of their lives —their pace, their finances, their relationships, their priorities, etc.
Likewise, it has granted local congregations and leaders the opportunity to rethink traditional modes and models. It has forced Christians to imagine new ways to fulfill their purpose, and it has pushed us to embrace new (or to reclaim old) methods of being together, while apart.
One of the best things that could come from this time of reflection is for the first time, or at least the first time in a while, many church-goers have grappled with what it means to be the Church outside of the hour or two a week spent engaged in corporate gatherings.
As many have already “re-opened” and moved their gatherings back inside of their buildings, I worry that many church leaders and goers will resume modes of activity that reduce the Church to its weekly large gathering. I fear that we will slip back into the habits of putting all of our eggs into the basket of Sunday morning programming.
Before I get into ways in which we need in the West to expand our imagination of the Church, let me first clarify that I believe that being in community is an important part of who the Church is, but it is not the sum of who we are or it is not the end of what we should do. Weekly gatherings should be defining while not the complete definition of who the Church is. It is an important part, but it is not the whole. And when we succumb in word or in deed to summing ourselves up with what happens on Sunday, we take ourselves out of opportunities to be who we are meant to be for a watching world. What we do outside of our time together is as important to who we are as what we do when we are together. The two should mutually inform each other and reinforce our identity as the Church.
So, what is the Church? Who is the Church? And what can we learn from this time of disruption?
While there are much longer works that take thousands of pages seeking to define this, I will point at 3 identity markers for who I believe the Church is.
Church is the Worshipping Community
All humans worship, because all humans love. James K. A. Smith argues that through desires, your life and my life will be aimed at something, whether we intend it or not. Whatever holds the place of the ultimate desire in your life is what you worship. It is the thing, the end, the person, that matters most and that informs the rest of your decisions and your life.
The Church is the community of people that “aim” their existence and their lives at God. It is the collective of people who have decided that following Jesus is the most important thing in life.
We most clearly reflect this when we gather and set aside time to the practices that reinforce God’s primacy in our lives — when we sing about God and what God has done, when we pray together, and when we open the Scriptures together to hear the story of God and to see ourselves as a part of what God is doing.
The Church is the collective of people throughout history who are living in response to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This leads Simon Chan to call the Church the “worshipping community.” Those who constitute the Church are the ones who have said “yes” to the invitation from Jesus, simply, “follow me.”
While our gatherings most clearly express this, worship is something we must live every day to participate faithfully in this community. God’s primacy in our lives should be evidenced in every decision, in every moment. As we individually respond in worship, we join the community of people who do the same.
Church is the Missional Community
The Church is made up of followers of Jesus, and as followers of Jesus, our lives must reflect His. He embodied the mission of God to all people, and the Church must do the same.
It has never been about our institutions, our sermons, our buildings, our songs, our people, our anything. As the church, we are only stewards of these resources which are to be deployed for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
To follow Jesus, means that we take up His mantle of proclaiming and embodying the coming Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus demonstrates for us that this mission is one that always reaches as far as it can to bring the seemingly furthest away home to God’s love and embrace. All that we do should reflect God’s heart to this end.
If a congregation ceases to be missional — intentionally reaching out to those outside its walls — it no longer participates in the Church, the universal Body of Christ on the earth. It is no more than a social club.
Church is the Anticipating Community
The Church is the community of those who are living in light of the end. Jesus’s promise to His followers is that He would return and establish His Kingdom on earth. The prophetic witness anticipates a day when God and the people would be together and there would be peace on the earth. Jesus embodies that hope, and as His followers, the Church is to be a foretaste and herald of that reality.
Eschatology represents the theology of the end. Our eschatology — what each of us believe will happen in the end — dictates the way we live here and now. Scripture’s vision of the culmination of history shows God at work remaking all of creation (cf. Romans 8:18–25; Revelation 21:1–5). Until then, we receive foretastes in and through the Church of what that will be like. And as the community that is filled and directed by the Spirit, the Church, we should lean into that reality that is available to us here and now.
We read in Acts 2 that after the pouring out of the Spirit, people of diverse backgrounds were brought together in loving, caring, missional community. That is what we look forward to. When God establishes justice and peace on this earth. And until then, the Church must work with the Spirit for that reality that is breaking out in the earth even now, though darkness may seem to prevail.
The Church Never Closed
The Church never closed and cannot be closed. It does not require a building or a program to live as the worshipping, missional, and eschatological community. In some ways, perhaps we do this better when we are not tied to a physical campus. This disruption has forced many to consider new methods and caused all of us to realize what is really important.
The Church is more than a gathering; It is to be the sign of the coming Kingdom of God. Until the day when we all live in the reality of God with us in the fullest sense, we must continue to be a salt and light, a city on a hill that shares the faith, hope, and love that God has so graciously revealed to us.
As we re-emerge from our time apart, may the work that God has done in our hearts take root. May never take for granted the church-community that God has graced us with. May we continue to resist the urge to confine the Church to a particular day, time, and place. May make every effort with creativity to worship God, stay connected, and share the Good News of Jesus in word and deed wherever God has planted us.
Sources
- James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016.
- Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping Community. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2006.
