Church Meets Here

We are representatives of Christ in this world and we have been brought into fellowship with Him
and one another in the Church. Ephesians 2 states:
19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone,
21 in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,
22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

The Church presents a glorious reflection of the presence of God. Because Jesus lives in our hearts, we can experience His cleansing power and we can testify to what He has done in our lives.  His Spirit is with us wherever we go, and we can depend on Him to use us to communicate His truth. While we do attend a gathering of believers at a church building, the Church is living and vibrant and goes into the world through His people.  Where we go, church can happen!

+++++

We are called to be part of the body of Christ, and we recognize that He lives in us, empowering and
directing us to spread His love and truth. 2nd Corinthians 5 says:
18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

A man named Lee sat down to eat at a Waffle House recently.  He asked the waitress what her name was and how he could pray for her.  As he relates in a first-person account on the Baptist Press website, "Our waitress looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, 'Unspoken request.'"

He relates that Misty, the waitress, had previously attended church. He asked her what she thought of Jesus. She said, "The Jesus I learned about in church seemed to love people a lot more than the church people I encountered."  He relates:

I told her I appreciated her being honest and agreed with her that Jesus did love people a lot more than we do. In fact, He loved them to even die for them.

He invited her to church as he gave her the credit card, which, of course, revealed his identity.  Lee, you see, is the evangelism group director for the South Carolina Baptist Convention.  The article relates:

"You're Lee Clamp!" she blurted out. "I just Googled your name. You were my camp pastor at Summersalt youth camp when I was in middle school! That's weird, isn't it? I shouldn't have told you I Googled your name."

So, what's the next chapter for Misty?  Lee Clamp writes:

If Misty is going to be discipled and cross over from death to life, it may need to happen at a Waffle House with a group of ladies who decide to meet her there at a time other than Sunday morning.

We will never saturate every life with the Gospel unless the church goes outside the walls. We also must customize our disciple-making strategies. Our current strategy of Sunday morning Bible study at the church may need to be expanded to church-on-location.

Whose name might you have missed this week? Sometimes it's hard to slow down enough to notice people. Maybe you need to go back and start a conversation. Who knows? They may already know you.

How about that?  Church-on-location.  We realize that while we are members of our local church body, we also belong to The Church, the body of Christ.  So, we carry the Church with us wherever we go.  You could say that "the church meets here," where two or three are gathered in His name.  Remember, the Church is a not a building, it is the people of God.

But we should not minimize our regular fellowship with a body of believers.  But, in order for someone to come into that church setting, there may need to be an invitation, perhaps a prompting, perhaps taking the Church, the life of Jesus, into non-traditional settings.

I am thankful for ways in which God will use people in creative, non-traditional ways, in order that His truth may be spread.  It just may be that in order to know Jesus, people need to see Jesus; and that occurs through the faithful witness and service of His ambassadors.  This is a challenge for us to make sure that Jesus and His Church are showing up through our lives.