Doing Church - Introduction (Matthew 16:13-19)

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For several years in the early 2000’s, my husband and I didn’t ‘go to church.’ We were two of many, many people, particularly in North America, whose imaginations and whose hearts were caught up by the ‘Missional Church’ movement. 

That movement was fueled by an increase in Christian bloggers, which provided people like us, living in a smaller town with not a lot of internet access up to that point, with a greater awareness of other opinions, traditions, and perspectives. It gave us some insight into ancient writers like St. Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Ignatius of Loyola, and Hildegard Von Bingen. These writers had a passion for Jesus, as well as insights and ideas that we found inspiring.  

Alongside that growing awareness of other Church traditions, seeing what was happening in our world (watching TV and reading the newspaper (back when that was a thing) and seeing the impact of our culture’s shift into post-modernism) meant taking a deep look into ourselves, and at the Church’s place in the world and saying, “We’re not in Christendom anymore.” Our world had changed.  

At the same time, in reaction to the post-modern movement of our broader culture, the Evangelical Church was creating a subculture of music and books and rules and vocabulary. Some of us started to wonder whether we were trying to turn Christianity into a sort of gated community. Someplace where we could feel safe. Some of us started to ask ourselves, “Are we supposed to feel safe? Are we supposed to even be safe?” 

The Missional Church movement helped my husband and me to put a finger on some frustrations that we both had with our church experiences, especially around dealing with people who were ignoring the way the world had changed, and who wanted to keep doing things the way they’d been doing them for decades and for centuries. We had butted heads with people whose motto seemed to be what is jokingly called The Seven Last Words of the Church: “We've always done it this way before.”  

Postmodern, Missional, Christian writers—bloggers and authors like Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch—were not only pushing back against stodginess within the church. They were also pushing back against the secular religiosity of consumerism. Of cynicism. Of vague spirituality. Of worshipping the tiny little gods of individualism. These writers pointed and pointed and pointed to Jesus, and they helped people like us to find our way through some of those frustrations while keeping our eyes on Jesus.  

They also refreshed our desire to see God do something amazing. They urged us, in the parlance of the conversation, to not just ‘do church,’ but to ‘be the Church.’ 

They wrote passionately about being the Church that was created and empowered by the God who was the original missionary,  

• The God out of whose real self flowed all that was good to create the universe to create us 
• The God who waded into the shallows of three-dimensional space to walk with Adam and Eve in the garden.  
• The God who chose to reveal His power, His glory, and His love to humanity,  
• The God who became one of us who embodied himself as a human so that He could deliver His message in person.  
• The God who, after His death and resurrection, filled us with His spirit and sent us out to do the work that He had begun—of restoring our relationships with him, with each other, and with our planet.  

Missional writers urged us to be that Church—to be the Church that was established by the God on whose mission we had been sent. They urged us to be the Church that was founded on Peter's testimony:

You are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God.

To be the Church that is on the march against the gates of death. The Church who hold the keys to those gates because we've been handed them by the one who infiltrated the kingdom of death and opened the gates from the inside.  

These writers urged us to reimagine the Great Commission, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel, making disciples...” not simply as a willingness to leave our home and to go to some other part of the world where maybe they hadn't heard about Jesus, but also as “You're going into the world anyway. You are going into the world every day. Wherever you are, as you are going, be preaching the good news of Jesus.” 

We heard fantastic stories—like the church that was planted on the Pine River in Australia by a guy who was a waterskier. He went waterskiing one Sunday morning and prayed with somebody. He went waterskiing the next Sunday morning and told somebody about Jesus. And they slowly built a church of waterskiers who met on Sunday morning on the bank of the river: who worshipped and ‘did church’ together as a bunch of waterskiers. We loved those stories. They're so exciting.  

Those ‘Missional Church’ years have left their fingerprints on the way church planting is done today, continuing to engage with the principles and ideas fleshed out during that era. It was a good thing. It was a powerful thing. It was an important challenge and, I believe, a correction for the way that many of us had been doing church.  

And I loved it. I don't regret a single second of missing church on Sunday mornings for the years that we were doing the work that we were doing.  

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However... 

I have to confess.  

I have to confess that, in my excitement of seeing God do amazing things as we went into our day to day world, I and others fell into a trap: of looking over our shoulders at the brick and mortar churches from which we had come, and being just a little bit prideful. 

Being a little bit arrogant.  

Because we said, “We're ‘being the Church.’ They're only ‘doing church.’ They're only showing up on Sunday morning for an hour, singing the same songs they've been singing since 1940, following the same formulas, putting their money in envelopes and into a plate. They are stuck in the past. They do their hour on Sunday morning and then they go home. Back to ‘real life.’ They're not really living their faith. They're not really ‘being the Church.’ Like we are.” 

That is the trap that we fell into. And that is a thing of which I have had to repent. 

Not because churches can't get stuck. Not because Christians can't forget to live out their faith out in real life and as they go in the world. We are all capable of doing those things. 

The reason why I have to repent of that attitude is because I came to understand that those things that we do in that hour on Sunday morning really matter. When we pray together, when we sing together, when we learn together, when we share baptism, when we sit side by side, rubbing elbows. When we do those things well, we are doing things that Jesus himself did and/or commanded us to do. And when we do those things together well, we are fed. We are healed. We are encouraged. We are humbled in ways that empower us when we go out into the world to ‘be’ preaching the gospel we need those things.  

They are an inescapable, inextricable part, a necessary part of living our lives of faith in Christ. They are a necessary part of living in—and living out—the mission of the missionary God.  

Where our vision fails, where we start to get off track, is when we start to think in terms of ‘being the Church’ and ‘doing church’ as two different things. It's not either/or. It's not binary.  

We ‘be the Church’ by doing the things that Christ has told us to do. We ‘be the Church’ by engaging—yes!—with Him in a personal relationship, and also with how He moves through our world. 

We ‘do church’ by being the Church: by coming together, being together, worshipping together, then going back out into the world and embodying the good news of Christ, because we have been fed and healed and embraced and encouraged (and sometimes corrected) by our brothers and sisters.  

We need... us.  

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During this series, we're going to come back a few times to Acts 2:37 and following. This is moments after Peter has preached his first sermon, and people in the streets are asking him, “Now what?”  

So the people, when they heard [Peter's sermon], were cut to the heart and they asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers and sisters, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” ...Those who embraced his message were baptized and about 3000 were added to the believers that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayer, and a sense of awe came over everyone, and the apostles performed many wondrous signs. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and their goods, they shared with anyone who was in need.

In that passage, we see the Church doing church: gathering, worshipping, baptizing, sharing communion at the breaking of bread, praying, learning, teaching, giving. These are the things that we do when we ‘do church’ and these are things that we must do well. Because Jesus has told us to do these things.  

So... for a few years in the early 2000s, I didn't go to church on Sunday mornings, and I do not regret a single second of that adventure. I don't regret a single second of that schooling and (I gotta be honest) there are times when I miss it. Because it was an adventure.  

But I have come back. I have come back to the brick and mortar church. I have come back to this hour on Sunday morning. I have come back to do the things that we do together when we ‘do church’ because I have come to understand that you can't ‘be the Church’ if you can't ‘do church.’  

We can together stay grounded in our shared history. We can together stay grounded in our forms of worship. And we can—absolutely—have the adventure.  

I am here to ‘do church.’ I am here to do it well. I am here to ‘do church’ in a way that shapes me, informs me, and changes me in a way that makes it possible for me to live out—and to live in—the mission of God.  

I am here to invite you to join me in doing church together in a way that equips us for being that Church.  

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