By Fred Peatross

“I’m a shepherd in the church.” “I am a minister on the church staff.” “I’ve been the involvement minister at the church for a few years now.” “He left the church.” “I gave money to the church.” We do “church work.” Sound familiar?

For years I parroted the traditional institutional jargon about “the church.” It sounded pretty convincing, but the more I studied and reflected upon scripture and our institutional concept the more I realized that I had a bad case of building-centric Christianity.

What Counts Anyway?
When I hear someone say twenty percent of all the people do eighty percent of the work, I want to ask them for clarification. Do we really believe God gets his statistics from activities and ministries conducted under the auspices of the church? Is that what counts? What about those of us who are exploring the spiritual beyond the walls of the “church?”

When I hear someone say, “We will meet at the building to hang flyers in the neighborhood this afternoon,” I want to say, “Why not just be ordinary 24/7 and patiently nudge people toward Christ by exploring the spiritual with those you know, work and play with?” In this new millennium, the cold door knock and impersonal flyer hanging offends people.

Church Promoters or Christ Connectors
I use to talk about taking “the church” to areas where no one had ever heard of “the church.” I told people about “my church” in an effort to get them to “come-to-church” so they would be faithful to the “church.” There are some members of “the church” who have never thought of, much less understood, themselves as “spiritual explorers partnering with Christ.”

But little by little, the Lord is breaking down the bondage of institutional Christianity and replacing it with a relational Christianity. I must admit that He’s not moving as fast as I would like, but I know that He knows better than Fred knows.

Our Ecclesiolatry is Showing
Our phrases tell on us.

1. We don’t love Christ; we love the church.
2. We don’t partner with Jesus in an effort beyond-the-church; we work for the church.
3. We don’t tell people about the crucified and risen Lord; we tell them about the church.

The truth is, we have not genuinely cared about the people Jesus misses most.

If we counted the hours we’ve given to “church work” verses time spent genuinely caring for those Jesus misses the most, we’d soon discover that more emphasis and time is spent crafting our Sunday morning assemblies than in connecting with a missing person.

We need more Fed Ex and less Club Med in our thinking when it comes to being the church.