The Church is not a building. It is not bricks or stones, cement or glass. When I lived in Florida, sometimes I drove to Lutz for work and would pass a small, white, one story church on the way. It was the Lutz Church of Christ. Looks like it would hold about 70 people or so. I never attended that church, but the sign caught my eye. It said "Lutz Church of Christ -- Meet Here." The sign made a statement. It was saying that the church is not contained just in those walls. The Church is spread out throughout the community, they just happen to get together at that location on Sundays and Wednesdays.
The Church is not Protestant of Catholic, Lutheran or Baptist, Latino, African-American, Filipino, or Caucasian. It is not relegated to a certain building, country or even day of the week. It does not require beautiful stained-glass windows, towering arches, or even a steeple. Where I meet my local church is in a remodeled warehouse. https://hputah.org/ And unfortunately, due to the threat posed by the highly-contagious virus COVID-19, the doors to that welcoming building remain locked.
So what is the Church then? It is the hands and feet of Jesus. Anyone who repents and believes Jesus died for their sins and accepts him as their savior is a part of the church.
excerpts from 1 Corinthians 12 -- The Message
************************12-13 Your body has many parts—limbs, organs,
cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body.
It’s exactly the same with Christ...then we entered into a large and
integrated life in which he has the final say in everything.
Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and
sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old
labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek,
slave or free—are no longer useful.
14-18 I
want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not
less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s
all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together.
If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand; I
guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said,
“I’m not beautiful like Eye; I don’t deserve a
place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the
body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As
it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right
where he wanted it.
25-26 The
way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives
together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the
parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts
we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt,
and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into
the exuberance.
27You
are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this.
****************
Check out all of 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul starts with explaining spiritual gifts and where they come from, then how they all work together in the body of Christ. Pray that the holy spirit will reveal our gifts and show us where they can be used.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+12&version=MSG
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