What is the church?
This question becomes more important when the church finds itself in a crisis. It’s easy to take for granted what a church is when all is moving along smoothly. The input of a crisis, though, creates tension that often leads to disagreements, dismissals, controversial changes, and confusion. We find ourselves asking, if the church is just like the corporate world, the work-a-day world, or the dog-eat-dog world, is it really worth sticking with it? Why be part of the church when it’s no longer a sanctuary from the difficulties we seek refuge from? What if we perceive the church as just as bad as the outside world we joined the church to get some separation from? What if our involvement in the church is just as confusing and upsetting as other settings which we have low expectations of?”
One opinion is that the church is a place where like-minded people gather for mutual support in their efforts to make a difference in the broader world. When the gathering fractures, some choose to get out and find a church home elsewhere, some choose to stay together and work through the fracture’s meaning, recreating a different commonality, a new church.
Another opinion is that the church is a gathering that moves from simple associations to true community that lifts its members to unusual achievements, joyfulness, and service. Communities have a way of holding people up to higher standards that have tremendous influence. But when fractures occur and some of the unity and strength of community is lost, the gathering has to choose between letting go of past community dreams or renewal. If the church craves the deep and vital strength of community, it will choose renewal, a difficult path, but not nearly as discouraging as giving up. A willingness to accept itself as a mere group of people doing very limited activities (like entertaining worship or shared child care), means that it can survive, but the strength of community is not part of its identity. This choice is for institutional power that is different from community strength. Renewal requires a courageous and diligent inner search for the answer to what the church is now.
All church fractures create a choice between loss and hard work. Do we give up or do the ensuing work of renewal? Frankly, some fractures are so deep and destructive that giving up might very well be the wiser choice. But even when one chooses to let go and move on, part of the moving on needs to be a renewed effort to find meaning and insight from the fracture. Fractures ought to lead us into our very hearts. The correct response to a broken community is the inward journey.
In the movie Gandhi when Gandhi asks one of his old friends, “Charlie,” to depart from leadership of the Indian revolution, Charlie is not sure how to say goodbye. Gandhi replies that “For you and me there are no goodbyes,” adding that “wherever you go we will always be in one another’s hearts.” It is a statement very similar to Jesus’ “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be also.” Perhaps this is what the church is about: wherever two or more gather to discover and do good, they are at the heart of God. They join with the love of God that gives us some insight into what truly good thoughts and actions are. This is where community begins, or where community is renewed.
Thus, this question—what is the church?—leads us back to two prayers of petition. One is “What is good?” This cannot be answered outside of community, though, for its answer is found in dialog. We need others who are willing to seek the good with us. The other petition is “What good should we do?” I can seek to answer the question “What good should I do?” by myself, but when “I” is replaced with “we,” community is involved. That community is the church, a gathering of people seeking to discern the good and do what is good.
Not an easy task, but once you’ve experienced the transforming nature of community life, anything less is unsatisfying.
The church, when it is the true church, draws us inward where we ask the hard questions of our day in dialog with others, then do something new with courage and hope. The church is where faith is deepened through openness with others and God, providing the open door where grace can transform life into confidence, caring, and courage. And the church is where faith is put into action, where the transformed person, the true community, and the shared resources are used to serve and transform the culture and state we live and work in. This is how the church draws us to the divine: it opens us up to the transformative activity of God.