A SECOND, SMALLER SERVING OF RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH AS INDIVIDUALS AND NOT AN INSTITUTION

Someone might ask why it matters if the distinction suggested by the title to this gracEmail is valid or not. I suppose that the emotional and logical thinking parts of the brains of many believers are so wired that they are never tempted to ponder such subjects. I have encountered a few folks who apparently are allergic to thoughts of that genre and also to the eccentric (in the literal sense of the word, as a wheel “out of circle”) thought processes that produce statements of the kind that got this sentence started. Still, I cannot stop it, don’t think I need to, and would not want to do so if I could. My brain does its own thing, and I amuse myself and bemuse my wife whenever we go anywhere together in the car–and without having to buy a ticket to anything for the pleasure. We just get in the car and take off. Automatically my thinking organ begins to percolate, and soon it is sending out a steady stream of assorted puns, allliterations, wierd riddles and other (so I am told) “unusual” bits of information. Whether the present gracEmail subject falls in that category or not, I will leave for someone else to decide. But it is a thought that has visited my mind off and on now for at least fifty years. In the beginning, the idea was straightforward and obviously not complex. To be a part of the church, as portrayed in the New Testament, is to be aligned with other people who love and trust Jesus and are committed to try to live so as to make him happy. In our day and place, we do “church” in a special building, engage in activities that we don’t do anywhere else or any other time, and sometimes even speak in a particular tone of voice, as though God doesn’t hear our prayers unt il they clear security, and the security system involves a voice recognition program. No,I say, none of that uniqueness is necessary–we can be “church” in a city park, beside a mountain stream or on a beach. We can gather in a home, a business-place, a shopping center or a renovated barn. I was part of a group once that did all the above. Of course, that confuses some people. Like the poor widow in the country to whom our “church” donated a truck load of coal one winter and she could not get her mind a round this kind of church. She asked our representative, Dan was his name, several times what kind of church this was, until finally in a rush of holy frustration he exclaimed, “Just say it’s a gift from Jesus and he’s sorry he couldn’t send more!”