The Locally Global Church

Many of us have grown up here around the "Bible Belt" of the United States hearing the phrase "going to church". In fact, church for me was always somewhere you went. People may ask, "Where do you go to church?" or "Are you going to church tomorrow?" It has simply become a part of our cultural language to "go to church".

Yet this phrase is absurd. The church is not located in space. Believers in Rwanda are connected in every way to believers in Portland, Oregon and Hoover, Alabama. They are not a different church. They are all a part of the same body, same family, same church. On this basis alone, the phrase "go to church" would be absurd.

But that is not all. The church is also not located in time. The church is not present only today, or tomorrow, or this coming Sunday. Believers that have passed on from life in this world into death have in no way, not one single way, ceased to be the church. In fact, they are more presently experiencing what we only get fading glimpses of. So, a body of believers that is in no one place and is connected throughout all of time cannot be a place that is visited. To say that I am "going to church" is an absurd picture of the Body of Christ.

The church is not a place, the church is a people.

However, the church is a local reality. The people that we gather with in worship and the people that push us to gain perspective on the eternal implications of living a life surrendered to Christ are people that we know and are, for us, located in a local body. Are we not to be especially connected to these local believers? Absolutely! We are to be spurred on to good works performed by faith in the one who works them in us as a body. This local body possesses the fruit of the Spirit (not individuals) and the gifts of the Spirit so that the local body may be an expression of Christ's presence. To be a part of this kind of gathering is special and should be praised.

But the local body that truly understands what it means to be the body will always, always, always point that local body to its connection with a global and timeless body. This is not done through once a year offerings (my apologies to Lottie Moon) or speaking engagements of missionaries. This is engaged in worship. Worship that understands the overwhelming reality that there in but one body. Worship that lifts its voice in a melody of praise that encompasses thousands of languages. Worship that proclaims God's Word with many tongues yet echoes in one single message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

At this moment the church has become locally global.

Here we have not merely "gone to church" but rather we have experienced the miracle of the people of God.