the church

I just finished reading The Emerging Church by a pastor in California named Dan Kimball. Really good stuff and I highly recommend it, especially if you work in youth ministry. It got me really excited, but I'm not going to go into all of it.

It also got me thinking about the Church (as opposed to the church). Most of us know - because most of us have the same good pastor - that the body of Christ is the Church, not the building we meet in. We know it, but I wonder how much we really believe it.

We believe that the church should produce a good Sunday morning service and attract people to Jesus. So if we really believed that we are the Church we would do the things that we expect the church to do.

We would volunteer in a ministry.
We would tithe regularly and give extra for special events or causes.
We would pray for our church leaders every day.
We would live like Christians in our workplaces.
We would worship, read a Bible and pray every day.

It wouldn't just be a good sermon to talk about reflecting Jesus or preaching without words ... We'd be doing it. Our passion would be as obvious in a traffic jam as it is on Sunday morning - because both are good times to worship or listen to a sermon.

So are we the Church or do we go to a church? Just a thought.