It is one of the great marks of having embraced an outward focused church model in our day. You cancel church services in order to be the Church. You cancel church in order to make sandwiches for the poor. Services are canceled in order to go paint houses. Worship is not held in order to go canvas the community in hope of getting to know them better.
Now I want to be clear: making sandwiches, painting houses, and getting to know neighbors in the name of Christ are kingdom things to do. God is well pleased when they are done in his name. They are ways of being Church.
But the idea that having church and being Church are to be set at odds with one another is a false dichotomy. Canceling church to be church is not a practice to be commended. It gives the impression or outright teaches that one can only be Church fully if they are willing to sacrifice having church.
There is only one way that anyone can be in reality Church. And that is by having church. How else does one become Church if not through Baptism, Word, Absolution, and Supper? There is no other way. These are the ways in which God has promised to wash away sin and give righteousness. These are the ways he has promised to rescue us from the multitude of unbelievers and incorporate us into and keep us in his holy Church.
In fact, the only way you can have the desire to be Church in the sense of loving neighbor is because of God’s work which he has accomplished in you by having church. The whole reason you know to do these things is because of the Spirit’s work in Word and Sacrament. So then why would anyone demean the very means by which they came to have these holy desires?
It is good to be the Church by loving our neighbors. But it can only happen in sincerity and truth when we are having church, gathering unto God where he forgives sin, gives gifts, and makes us to be Church.
Every false dichotomy in the Church demeans one holy thing in order to emphasize another. And that should not be. Let us afford all holy things the honor that Christ himself affords them in his Word. Having church is good in the truest sense. Being the Church is good in the truest sense. Let us not demean one to do the other.
Phil,
I am not sure that i can agree with you on this one. Not that I don’t feel gathering together isn’t important (it is), or that teaching/instruction isn’t important (it is), or that the sacraments aren’t important (they are) but rather in the sense that you want to make a distinction between “going to” and “being the” church. A distinction that I don’t really see scripture, itself, making. I guess that I would need to see that scripture calls those who follow God to “go to church”. What I see is that those who follow God and gather together for instruction, sacraments, etc. are the church (in a sense, being the church). In other words, we don’t gather “to have” church, but, rather, the “church” gathers together to receive instruction, etc. To me it sets up the idea of somewhere we go versus something we are. And I would contend that scripture is much more interested in who we are (the church) rather than going “to church” – in fact I would say “going to church” would almost be a foreign concept to the world of the first century. . The church doesn’t go to church, the church gathers together and part of what “the church” does, together, is worship through the Word, sacraments, living life together, reaching out to others, etc. Just my thoughts.
Let me just update this a tad. My phrase “going to” church more, or less, equals your idea of “having” church. I kinda muddled my way through what i was trying to communicate above. Again, however, i hold that the gathered people of God are the church and when they are together they do certain things (they don’t have church, they are the church)and in doing those things they are truly being the church. I don’t go to listen to a sermon, receive communion, witness baptism and consider those things as “having” church…i go as part of a (local) community of believers that when we get together listen to a sermon, etc. because that is how God has instructed us, as the church, to function when we get together, as the church. We do those things to reflect that we are truly the church. And gathering together, as the church, for instruction, encouragement, sacraments, etc. should be the standard and should never be routinely replaced…but do you honestly think God is displeased when His church, on occasions, is “being the church” to and in culture on a Sunday morning, that for the most part, will rarely come to a building to see “the church” be the church on its own turf? I am also not “being the church” simply by doing good things or loving neighbor (though that is true)I am “being the church” when I gather together with others who have placed their faith in Christ and when we do gather we, as the church, do those things together (listen to a sermon, prayer, sacraments, loving neighbor, etc.). Perhaps when we don’t provide “the church” with practical ways to “be the church” to our neighbors during our gathered times we are demeaning the idea of “being church”. Again, this is probably clear as mud as well. But this is how I process and think…listen, reflect, speak, reflect, adjust, change, keep, listen, reflect, speak, reflect, etc.