Chris Bean

This particular Sunday morning found me experiencing a couple of different expressions of church. Although they were both pretty large gatherings, the style of worship was quite different as was their impact on me personally and spiritually.

At the first worship gathering, I saw some old friends and connected with people in a way that was familiar, comfortable, etc. Since I was meeting up with a student and his mom, it was also a great opportunity to build relationships and connect with someone that I am discipling. During that service, the pastor brought some challenging and inspirational thoughts about ‘church’ from Hebrews 10. Interestingly, embedded in this passage is a set of verses which I’ve been recently trying to commit to memory.

“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts psrinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”

These couple of verses (vv.22-23 of chapter 10) have been part of my “freedom journey” over the past few weeks as I continue the process of living completely in the awareness of God’s grace and not out of any ability to live righteously on my own.

But the encouraging words the pastor shared today emphasized what we can experience as church based on the reconciling and priestly work Christ finished on the cross for us. A priest builds a bridge between people and God. And Jesus did that once and for all so that we have direct access (in the context of community) to God. This access doesn’t legitimize the individual attempt to live a life of faith, but should increase our awareness of what it means to belong to one another IN Christ.

Often times, pastors come across as desperately trying to convince people to come to church for trivial reasons:

• for the sake of numbers
• or to sustain the church financially
• perhaps to feed the pastor’s ego for “success”
• etc

But this morning I heard a passionate and scriptural call for believers to be engaged in the community of faith. It’s a two-way street. We don’t just go to church for what we can get out of it, or because we desperately need it even. And in fact, when we think of it in terms of “going to church” we’ve already betrayed a lack of understanding in what it means to BE the church…to intimately BELONG with a group of people who share in this transforming journey of relationship to God through faith in Christ.