…mine, Mine, MINE!

I have gone to church in some form or fashion, my whole life. I have said things like this: “I belong to a church”, or “You should come to my church sometime”, and even “I really like the music and worship at our church”. If you go to church these statements might seem all too familiar.

Let me start with this: The church is not a place to be owned or a local expression – it simply is not “yours” or “ours”. It is the height of arrogance to think that just because you are part of something, it automatically becomes yours. It would be like assuming that gym membership entitled you to some level of gym ownership. Just try and take some of your dumbbells home with you, right?

I know that most of the time we use these personal possessive pronouns not actually referencing ownership. We use them to make it sound familiar, but often this leads to subjective entitlement. How entitled you are as part owner is then left up to each individual person. And so it has become with the church, as actual ownership is often times somewhat ambiguous.

The church is often thought to be owned by the Senior Pastor, or a denomination of some kind, and sometimes even the congregation. These are three types of church leadership, and often times the leader gets confused with the owner, both to those attending and often times themselves. So who’s church is it? Who is the so-called “owner”? Look at this verse:

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” –Jesus (Matt. 16:18, italics and bold mine)

The church is the universal Body of Christ. We seem to be making it out like each church is the local expression of the entire Body of Christ (their own private body of Christ?) instead of just one part in the greater church as a whole. Seriously, how can we own something that is not a physical, tangible something? The answer is simple: we can’t, and we really should stop trying so hard to.

We compete for people to come to our churches. We are not only ungenerous with other churches, most of the time we are down right selfish. Maybe there is a hole in the whole line of thinking and direction the church is heading with this idea that the church belongs to anyone other than Christ. ….just sayin’

In His Grip,

Pastor Pat