This Thing We Call....Church Part 1

Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

Over the past couple of months, I’ve struggled to put into words this idea about church that has been growing within me. I look back at myself as a child, and I remember when church was just something to get through rather than experience. It was no different than waiting in line at the DMV for an hour or sitting through a high school Algebra class. Even when I became a Christian back in 2016, I still struggled to see church or at least the assembly part of it as meaningful. There were definitely worthwhile relationships that emerged from it but for what I understood it to be at the time it was largely uninspiring and repetitive. The cycle of church on Sunday and small group during the week with a church event or program sprinkled in led me to ask a big question of myself: Is this it? Is this the hope I was seeking? This question wasn’t limited to just one church either. When I moved to Iowa in 2022, I attended a bigger church for my first six months and though there were some improvements, those questions remained. I spent a year and a half in at a quaint United Methodist Church in Cedar Falls serving on the tech team and strongly considered a ministry career within the United Methodist Church, but still those questions remained. Even when I moved over 700 miles from the Midwest to the Allegheny Plateau on the back of divine inspiration and joined a small but bustling Anglican Congregation (and quite possibly the best church I’ve ever been a part of), those questions did not fade. As I wrestled with this over the last few months, it wasn’t necessarily that those churches had faults (some had quite a few), it was my view of church was decidedly narrow. It was the during the Covid Pandemic of 2020 that I had begun to challenge the notion of how church was done. Since coming to Appalachia in the winter of 2023, my view of church is wider than it ever was and in that widening church has become something of an experience.

If I had to describe this experience, or even define it now, I would say that church is the awareness of all people as image bearers of God, manifested in the intentional practice of God’s economy among them. The currency of this divine economy is love-given freely, not as transaction but as transformation, so that in each person, a creative personhood might be built up. One that reflects Christ while remaining wholly itself. This is church as I’m coming to know it, free from political and institutional bonds to be something that truly covers the earth.

You may have noticed that I didn’t describe church as place.

I think that’s because my earliest understanding of church was framed by the way people interacted with it. Church was a place that people came to. It was where people gathered whether they stumbled upon it or were invited. For many churches, the way to carry out the Great Commission is to go out and invite people back. From this perspective, having a place is integral.

Another reason church is often described as a place is because the assembly, or church service, is considered to be church itself rather than a part. Being that so much of what the evangelical church defines as success is getting people to be present for this has only served to tie church to the idea of it being a place. While it can be a place to bring people in, I have wondered how often it ends up keeping people out.

I have heard many an elder or Pastor say in response to the question of how people should develop a relationship with God:

“People just need to attend their local church.”

Again, take note that is answer establishes church as a place. I always get a bit irritated when I hear this particular statement because from a logistical standpoint this doesn’t make sense. We have a pretty diverse range of Christian denominations in this country and one’s local church could be one of any of these. So, if a complementarian Baptist says this, are they considering that for someone else their local church maybe an Anglican one led by a female rector whose theology they may not support at all? If everyone heeded the call to attend their local church would that really sit well with people given the lack of ecumenical expression?

Thankfully I believe Jesus would have a response to the idea that people just need to attend their local church. Just before the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus’s disciples urged in him to send the crowds away to their villages to find food citing the desolation of the place where they were gathered and the lateness of the hour (Matthew 14:15). Jesus responded: (Matthew 15:16) “They don’t need to go away; you give them something to eat.”

There’s a call to action in there. Jesus was inviting them into a divine participation. I think it’s the same way we ought to respond to the “just attend your local church” crowd: No, you be church for them. You share your life with them where they are at rather than reduce church down to a building, program, or obligation.

So, if church isn’t a place, then what is it?

For me, church is a daily practice. It is something you carry around in your body. It is the way you choose to look at and interact with people. It is worship, particularly when other individuals who are also carrying church around come together with you in the spirit of God. It is not defined by the boundaries of a building but in its efforts to build in the world a kind of economy that is healing.

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This article is written by Network Writer Stefon Napier, and is crossposted from his personal blog on substack! To learn more about Stefon visit his team page at https://www.kfmbroadcasting.com/team/napier-s. You can find his full library of writings on his substack at https://stefonnapier.substack.com/