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I Peter 2: 4-10 What does it mean to be a great church? Is it a tall, majestic steeple? Is it gorgeous, stained-glass windows? Is it a big pulpit Bible? Or a clergy collar? Is it a beautiful Christmas Eve liturgy, or an Easter procession? Or, to highlight some of our best Methodist moments, is it a table full of scrumptious covered dishes?
All of these things might be associated with a great church, but we know that none of them define the heart of the matter. I think of a saying I heard once that I think gets closer to the heart of the matter: Church is what is left when the building burns down and the pastor leaves town. That saying points out the fallacy of our inclination to say, “We're going to church,” as if the church is a place we go - or that the church is what the clergy do, as in the way a four-year old neighbor boy used to yell at me, "Hi, Mr. God."
The fact is, the building and the pastor playa role. But whether you have a church or not depends on what is left when the building and the pastor are out of the picture - it depends on what happens in the hearts of people of faith who have joined together to express that faith. So to talk about the marks of a great church means talking about what is happening in the lives of people together. That's where the church is.
Earlier this year, our Administrative Council did an exercise to define what these marks might be. We started with the statement, “I want to be part of a (blank) church,” and we filled in the blank. Now, think about that for a moment. How would you fill in the blank? I want to be part of a (blank) church. At the Council meeting, we came up with a list of about 25 words that might describe an ideal church. Then we did a voting exercise that ranked the words, and five words rose to the surface as the most important in our group - see if your word fits in to these somewhere. Spiritual, caring, friendly, loving, and relevant. These five got far more votes than the other words on our list.
I would like to suggest that what we have named there might be called the marks of a great church. Last week I preached about the marks of a great individual life. But it's always important to remember that the faith of the Bible has only a limited amount to say to individuals. The faith of the Bible is about people together; in short, it's about the church. The lion's share of the Bible was written for the group - in the Old Testament, for the nation of Israel; in the New Testament, the Church of Jesus Christ.
So we want to be a great church. And we want to know what a great church looks like. I set out this morning to preach about these five markers of a great church. But five was too many to deal with; so I hope the Ad Council will accept this adjustment to their thoughts: I am putting Caring and Friendly under the word Loving - I think they fit. And what I would like to suggest this morning is that when we talk about a great church, we can ask these three key questions: Is it spiritual? Is it loving? And, is it relevant?
First of all, is it spiritual? In one of those Letters to God from Children books, I saw this letter: Dear God, we had a good time in church today. Wish you could have been there. One of the great tragedies that can take place in the church is that there may be times when God is not there. When that happens, of course, it is not God's choice. God has not turned his back on us. It means that we have turned our back on God. And it's probably very rare that we would do that intentionally. It happens because we stop being a spiritual place, and focus totally on material things. And when that happens, it is a tragedy. There are some churches that live in that condition all the time - they have forgotten to focus on God, because they are so wrapped up in practical concerns. Once you've done that, the church has really lost its way. We know that, but the fact is, every church can fall into that if we're not careful. I believe that is what our Ad Council meant when they gave great priority to our church being a spiritual place.
It means, for example, that prayer is not optional here; prayer is part of the lifeblood of who we are. Prayer is our spiritual time with God. It means our music is different because it is a spiritual exercise. Our talking is different; our respect for others is different; our regard for sacred symbols is different - because of the spirit that fills us.
Surely this is the Bible's vision for the church. In the words we read this morning, the apostle Peter uses the image of a building to talk about the church. What we need to remember is that when he was writing, there were not many actual church buildings. The church of his time wasn't connected to the building on the comer like it is today - the church was clearly the people of faith. And to those people, Peter wrote: Come to (the Lord), a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house... What a beautiful image - a spiritual house made of living stones - you and me connected by Christ.
The educator Allen Bloom writes about students he encounters who have a vivid image of what a perfect body looks like - and they exercise and diet and strive for it. But they haven't a clue what a perfect soul looks like, and they live as if they have no soul at all. Surely the world needs the witness of a great church - a spiritual church.
The second question: is it loving? We talk about love a lot in the church, but I want to illustrate it from a different slant, shared by a pastor named Brian Jones in a recent article. He wrote that he was contacted by a woman who begged him to come to her house and officiate at her wedding. She was six feet tall, with spiked hair, and a football player's build. It would just be a small ceremony with family and friends. When he arrived, dozens of choppers filled the front yard. Leather jackets, German-style helmets and tattoos were everywhere. People streamed in with a case of beer in one arm, and a dish of food in another. The music blared. The best man was passed out in a chair in the corner. When the wedding finally started, to the music of Led Zeppelin, they propped the best man against the wall. The minister gave his standard wedding service, and pronounced the bride and groom married, and someone yelled, "Let's party!" And everyone swarmed up to congratulate the married couple.
The minister, quite out of place and uncomfortable, yelled over the music that he needed to leave. And when he did, the father of the bride took his arm and asked him to stay for a moment so they could make a toast. The toast went like this:
The music was turned down, and the bride asked to go first. She said to the group, "I want to toast you guys. You are just like family to me." And she said to her maid of honor, “Jackie, you are just like a sister to me.” Then Jackie came and hugged the bride, and thanked her that three years ago, when she lost her baby, the bride was there for her. Then Jackie turned to the group, and said, “I wouldn't have made it without you... without all of you. I wanted to die. You gave me reason to live.” Then the bride said, “Richard, when my brother passed away, you were there for me. You were driving a rig cross-country at the time, but you still came over every weekend.” Someone else then said, “You've been there for us too. When I lost my job, you brought groceries over to my house and bought school clothes for my kids. I'll never forget that. A man in the room thanked the two guys who picked him up from jail and took him in until he could get back on his feet. Someone loaned a car when someone else couldn't get to work; someone babysat for a couple in a pinch. The toast went on for ten minutes or more. And the pastor realized that part of this was meant to be shared in front of him. And he didn't feel out-of-place anymore. And he thought to himself, “This is church.”
It comes in all sizes and shapes, but a great church is a loving place. It has a great care ministry. It wears a friendly face. It welcomes the stranger like a guest in our living room. It reaches out in mission near and far. It doesn't judge. It honors and respects one another. It holds one another to accountability in a loving way. I think there are many moments like that in our church. And I think we strive to be greater all the time.
A great Christian writer from a bygone era, Elton Trueblood, wrote, "The early Christians were not people of standing, but they had a secret power among them, and the secret power resulted from the way in which they were members of one another." At times we talk about becoming members of the church as if it's like becoming members of an organization. It's not. It's becoming members of one another - living stones in God's great house - joined together by a great bond of love because deep inside we know that we can't outlove God - and that is something we need to share with others.
And finally, and very briefly, a great church is a relevant place. We tell an old, old story - Christ died for our sins, and rose again to announce God's victory over sin and evil and death. That message is the heart of who we are as Christians, and it cannot be changed or watered down. But having said that, the way the message is presented does change, so that the church can be relevant to the times. We sing new songs in new styles that speak today. We adapt to a visual age by using Power Point and other projection. We engage in dialogue with science and other faiths and the world in which we live. Of course, as we do this, we don't throw out traditions that have spoken to people for decades and even centuries. We don't throw out the beliefs that are the basis for our faith. But we do blend in the new with the old in a way that speaks to the real world.
And, another important aspect of being relevant - we don't become fake or phony people. If anything, we become more real and honest -- real people, honestly exploring faith and applying it to our real lives. That is what it means to be a great church - a relevant church.
Is it spiritual? Is it loving? Is it relevant? These are questions we should constantly J be asking ourselves as we strive to be the people God wants us to be together. Let me close by looking to Peter's words in our scripture lesson - words he surely was speaking to a great church - words that I believe define what God has in mind for us: “…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light.” This world filled with darkness desperately needs a place like that. May that always be what God sees when he looks at us.
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