Part 3
Here is the door, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people. Did you ever learn that finger rhyme as a child?
When we moved back to the U.S. I decided to teach my children this rhyme, they were far too old for it but fascinated by it nonetheless. At this point, having only experienced church life overseas, it didn’t make sense to my kiddos. They asked me, what was a steeple? For them, church wasn’t a free-standing building with four walls and a steeple. It was people who were sometimes at our home or a friend’s house, or in the neighborhood, or in an apartment on Sunday, essentially church happened around people, not the place.
As I repeated the rhyme, I actually began feeling regret about teaching them this view of the church because it focused on a building, one that sadly many are leaving. I quickly covered up my blunder by saying, “this was just a silly game we used to play as children” because deep in my heart I didn’t want my children to define Church in this cliche way. They’ve experienced church around the globe and it’s never looked or acted one particular way, and I’d like them to keep that vision because by the time they are my age church will likely not be the white walls and steeple that I grew up in.
The Church is not a building. The Church is made of people, who sometimes muddle up a good thing.
Who are all the people we call the Church?
In Hebrews 10: 19-25, Paul reminds us that “our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water,” and this is our communal confession of hope.
Our familial bond is birthed quite literally by way of our baptism available by the blood and sacrifice of Christ. Our baptismal confession joins us as one body living life together as a family. Furthermore, we become the indwelling of God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17), a holy temple, the Church. We are “not born of human descent, but born of God.” (Paraphrase of John 1:12-13)
This is the Church I want my children to grow up experiencing on Sunday and every other day of the week. Though sometimes people in the church, our family, you and me, don’t make being in the church easy. We must be committed to being the Church we want for the future, the Church God intended us to be. Let’s not neglect meeting together. (1 Corinthians 10:25)
The Three Little Churches
Considering the Church as my family grew on me. Who wouldn’t want people to be there for them when their biological family couldn’t? The more the merrier, right?
Serving overseas now linked us to three churches. 1.) Our sending home church in America, 2.) our para-church agency who trained us, placed us on the field, and managed our ministry, 3.) and then, our local expat church in China.
1.) Our first church became distant. Like moving away from your parents for the first time, a relational distance naturally forms. It’s part of moving, part of growing up. It doesn’t make one less connected, the relationship merely changes. And so it was with our sending church. We still remained a part of the fellowship through baptism, support, prayer, and occasional visits, only the string that connected us had to stretch a little farther. We became an extension of their ministry and service in another land.
One great joy of the Church at large is that we don’t serve the world’s sometimes mind-numbing pains and injustice as individuals. As God’s temples united, our feelings of individual helplessness turn to empowerment when we join together to meet the world’s needs. Global change is a team effort.
The needs of our world can’t be met by islands, but the Church united can make a difference. We were in a sense being sent as a link with this local church to the wider global Church.
2.) The second church bamboozled us. Entrusted as our caretakers, guides, accountability, and leadership we expected this arm of the family to be there for us through the ups and downs. Before moving overseas, we’d discussed and prayed with this group about adoption. We’d been honest throughout the process, making it known and getting permission, to grow our family through adoption while living overseas. We’d thought we were heard and on the same page—until we weren’t.
The truth is, sometimes like our ‘regular’ families, we forget our church families are just people too. As a person, I know I’m not perfect, so I can’t expect others to be either. People can be fickle, people change their minds, people don’t listen, people sin, people make mistake, people make false judgments, people are selfish, yes, even Christians.
Without the details, for they are not edifying, at the end of it all we were asked to leave this family due to the nature of our adoption. Though bonded by baptism and all loved by God, at the end of the day our sinfulness can cause division within the Church. (A huge cause for our state of church-life in America today and something I will talk more about later.) At that moment it felt like being excommunicated, but not for some sinful act against God’s commands, for loving the orphan. My mind could not grapple with this inconsistency, I was shocked.
For those who’ve been kicked out of a family, it’s earth-shattering. The raw feeling of not being wanted because something is valued over you (a person) can wreck a soul; this is true whether a wrong was committed or not. I didn’t expect this church family to act in such a manner, I was blindsided, to say the least. But what could I do other than walk away with my tail between my legs? Again I felt hurt. Again I felt ostracized and abandoned, but this time by people I thought genuinely cared about me and followed God’s word in faith.
3.) The third church pulled us from the mire. Thank God all is never lost and He never abandons his flock, even the one lost and wandering. He’s deeply invested in saving His Church, to restoring peace and unity.
While church three tended to our broken hearts, they were teaching me that church experiences are just that, experiences. Just like encounters with people. They come and go, they are good and bad. It is how we chose to walk forward with the knowledge we’ve gained from those experiences or relationships. The way I see it is we can either move forward in pain, anger, disappointment and give up (harden our hearts; I was on the verge at this point), or we can repent, forgive, practice empathy and compassion, seek peace and unity, and not give up on God’s gift–the Church, each other (Matt. 5:24-25, 6:14).
How we respond to these encounters in church-life shapes how the Church will act, look, respond to the world, and reflect upon God and us in the future.
I didn’t want to become part of the cycle I’d already been experiencing
Church three inspired hope in us to not give up the fight for God’s Church.
By lifting us from the ashes and wiping away our tears and saying, “We will carry you through the years to come,” they breathed new life into our lungs. True to their word, they took over the places of leadership, care, accountability, fellowship with gentleness, love, empathy, and compassion until we could stand again. They embraced our adopted daughter and us as a family, with no judgment. The cost was not too high a price for them to pay. This fellowship of people from all nations, denominations, economic backgrounds, colors, and spiritual experiences taught us, for perhaps the first time, the true meaning of compassion–“to suffer with.” (Compassion, pg. 3) They suffered alongside us through a trying time until we all arose victoriously!
This is when a spark of love for the Church set aflame and I began believing she’s worth fighting for.
Join me in the journey.
Thank you for enduring through this long post. I hope you are being encouraged to rethink your view of the Church and see that we can reengage because the Church is worth it. There is something worth preserving, otherwise, Christ died for nothing. If you haven’t joined me along the wandering way, please do so by subscribing at the bottom of the website.
