The Church Building

This week we are thinking about "The Church Building", and the suggested Bible Readings are:

Luke 4: 16

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom”

Luke 9: 57 – 58

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

All readings are from the NRSV and copyright © 1989 National Council of Churches, USA


At Foxton Methodist Church, when I arrived as the minister, we had a church building that was cold, damp, and which needed a great deal doing to it - it was also not very flexible. We also had 12 tired members, for whom this building had become a major drain on their energy and time.

In the centre of the village was a new, modern, village hall. After much heartache, prayer and meetings, we made the decision to let go of our building, and to move the church, from our building to the village hall, where we began worshipping in the bar. For the joint acts of worship with our Anglican friends we used one of the bigger rooms, in which case there were two available to us, one holding about 80, the other well over 120.

Our last service in the old building was Palm Sunday 2007, meaning that our first act of worship in the new place was Easter Sunday morning. On the morning of Easter Sunday 2007, we all stood at the end of the worship in a circle. One of the members stated what we were all so aware of, “God was with us”. Rarely have I felt the presence of God in such a real way as with those dear friends on that morning, as we stood together having just shared the Lord’s Supper together. Where was the church? The church was gathered in the bar at the village hall! From here on, they were a people set free to explore new ways of worship and to express their faith. In the next year, they leafleted the whole village twice; once to tell them what we were doing in our “Month of Evangelism” and once to ask the people what they wanted from their Methodist Church so that we could serve the community better. At the harvest festival, which began on the allotment by the way, they had approaching 100 people attending the worship. They had been set free from their building, and this allowed them to be the church. What we saw was growth in the members, growth in attendance, and growth in the membership. Not everyone can do this, but I believe that this shows how much our buildings can hold us back, and what having the right building can do to set the people of God free.

The discussion material for this week, starts by highlighting that we use the same word for the community of the faithful, the building that they meet in. I feel that in fact you have to add to the list the fact that actually we use this word for Universal gathering of the saints, the collection of all the Christians, the local gathering of a denomination, the gathering of denominations in a place, and so on – it's confusing isn’t it?

The word “Church” is simply our derivation of the German word Kirche, which you can trace back to the Greek word kuriakon – meaning a thing that belongs to the Lord. What is interesting is that we then use this word to translate a different Greek word, the word ekklasia, which was the word that the early church used of themselves. It was a word that the church knew from everyday usage, but not as a religious word, but instead it related to an assembly of people from self governing city - a council if you like.

Now depending upon your point of view, this is either fascinating or boring – you decide, BUT. . . the reason that they used it, was because in the Greek version of the Old Testament this was the word that was used to describe an assembly or congregation of Israelites, especially those who were “within the covenant”. Suddenly we are back on Methodist home ground – Covenants are things that we understand, for we are people who re-enter into the eternal covenant that God offers his people every January. Likewise, we understand, that Jesus' blood was shed to bring in the New Covenant, hence why this forms part of our understanding of what happens at the communion rail.

So, we are a group of people who are within the covenant – I like that, I like that a lot. It means that we remove barriers of denomination, geography, and churchmanship. It takes me back to my belief in the One Holy Catholic Church, and my Methodist Catholic Spirituality. It means that I understand that we are a group of people who have entered into a covenant relationship with God and who are simply asking what our role is – no caveats, no limitations. It means that in terms of what we are called to do, we are ruling nothing in, and in terms of who we need to be in partnership with we are ruling no Christian partner out. It also means that it is ONLY when we have done this, that we can then ask the simply question, “now what buildings do we need?”, recognising that some of those building may already exist, and that some of them may not be owned by us, but only rented.

In our groups on Tuesday and Wednesday there were five questions to stimulate the discussion, based on the bible readings quoted at the start – these have been re-produced by permission of the publisher:

1. Is the common use of the same word to describe both the community of faith and the building it meets in helpful or confusing? If confusing, which description should we change, and to what?
2. Is the building the physical structure that gives identity to the community of faith, or merely the frame around the picture? Do we serve the building or does the building serve us?
3. Is our building in the right place? Is it the right building? Or is it the right building in the right place but unsuitable for present day needs?
4. Where does the shoe pinch? In what ways does our building need overhauling and re-equipping if we are to be liberated in our worship and effective in our work together for God?
5. What should we do about it? Let the ideas flow!

Taken from “Re-pitching the tent – Third Edition, by Richard Giles ©2004 Canterbury Press, an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd. Used by permission.