Humble Pie: It’s Not About Us — Monday
Matthew 18:20
“For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.” (NLT)
“Hey! What do ya got there?”
Swinging my macaroni art from Sunday school through the air, I held it up to my dad proudly.
“Wow, look at that!” he smiled. Grabbing my tiny hand, he pulled me into his hip. “Stay close,” he reminded me as we hustled back to the car. Strolling up the hill, we ventured into the busy Southland parking lot. Waves of double-breasted suits and big, curly hairstyles rolled by, hurrying inside the stained-glass concrete building to catch the next service.
Ah, yes. 1997.
On the way home, we stopped at a local hardware store. As we approached the front of the building, I heard the sound of voices singing, coming from inside. “Oh, I guess this store must be closed on Sundays,” Dad pondered. “It looks like they’re having church!”
“Church? In a hardware store?” my four-year-old curiosity immediately peaked.
“Well, sure!” he said with a smile. “Church can be anywhere, son. A store, a school, a barn—even in the middle of a field.”
A field? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Then Dad said something I would never forget:
“A church is just a group of people who love Jesus…”
Jesus reminds His disciples (and us) that wherever we gather in His name—there He is. He is omnipresent. Sadly, over the last few hundred years—the American church has complicated what Jesus intended to be simple. Whether or not we’re willing to admit it, we all have some sort of picture in our heads of how a “church'' is supposed to look. Some would insist it needs stained-glass windows and a pulpit, while plenty of others would argue it needs IMAG screens and a fog machine. (In my short life, Southland has had all of these things, by the way.)
But the truth is… A church is NOT a building. A church is a group of people who love Jesus.
Southland may have changed a LOT over the years (especially since the nineties). But what I love about this church is that it has always been a group of people who love Jesus and love people the way that Jesus does. Now, our mission is to help plant more healthy churches across Kentucky that do the same.
Who knows? One of them might even meet in a hardware store!
Monday’s Reflection
Think about the word “church.” What are some things that come to mind when you hear this word? Journal some thoughts about what a church should look like that have nothing to do with a building.
