FAITH

January 19, 2012
Central City Market | Santa Maria Town Center (Mall) next to Macys.  345 Town Center East, SM 93454

The Natural Cafe | 
Frozen Yogurt
Solvang


Healing Rooms | 3010 Skyway Dr, Unit C, Santa Maria, CA 93455
Santa Maria Airport across the street, Raddison Hotel next to Airport.

January 13, 2011
What is the Church?

Having freed myself to *not* attend church for several months has afforded good time and space to connect with God in beautiful ways.  It has also allowed me to breathe, reflect, and think about the church as I see it today. What is the purpose of the church? What is the value in attending church? And what can the church look like in it’s most glorious state?

While there is much to say here, my musing today is simple.

Church is not a building. It is not even an organization.

It can be a collectivity of people coming together along the lines of shared faith values, in spaces formal or informal, where two or more are gathered in Jesus name.

But church is also more than that.

I’ve come to believe that the church is Love. At least it ought to be Love’s greatest expression. And in speaking of Love, I do not simply wish to offer this as an abstract concept, theological construct, or lofty notion. Rather Love, I believe, must be embodied in people.

The church therefore, at least as I understand it today, is God's Love embodied in God's people.

And so as God's people walk, talk, live and play in their respective spheres of influence and activity, the church as the embodiment of Love also inevitably becomes the glorious expression of God's Love everywhere in the world, for everyone in the world.

As both the embodiment and expression of God's Love, therefore, the church is situated as both a noun and a verb. The church is us. And the church lives in and through us.

And because there is an intrinsic foundational human element to being the church, the church is thus inherently fragile, broken, and imperfect.

Yet interestingly it is through the very cracks and fizzures of the imperfect church, whereby God's most perfect Love shines through. 

And it is in this way that the church remains to me, and hopefully to the world...
                                                                                                                     ...ever-beautiful.