You have heard me repeatedly say from the pulpit, "The church is not a building; it is a community." I deeply believe these words. If-God forbid-our church building burnt down tomorrow, we would still have a church, because we would still have our community. This year we began a new ministry called Church Out of Bounds, where every fifth Sunday we cut out of worship early and spend some together as a congregation serving others outside the walls of our building. I can't think of a healthier thing for a church with a building to do, because all too often church people get confused and think the church is in fact the building. That's the problem with our religious language. We use the same word for the building and the community that uses it. We get confused about our identity and think it is found in brick and mortar rather than as followers of Jesus Christ.
The vast selloff of religious real estate over the last decade speaks to the truth of our inadequate vocabulary. Everywhere you look individual congregations and entire denominations are selling off buildings they no longer can afford. Yet, the presence of God still resides among faithful people whether or not they own real estate. A building is not necessary to be a church. That wasn't the case in the first century and it remains the case among many congregations today. There
are plenty of churches with buildings that look like a church in terms
of real estate but not in terms of actually being a community of love
and grace.
I
can name a long list of congregations that today are upside down on
their real estate, sort of the way many individuals and families are
upside down on their mortgages. There are churches who
built tremendous buildings when their congregations were larger and our
culture approved of going to church. Now these same
congregations cannot afford their big (and empty) buildings anymore, and
they devote all their energy and money to keeping the buildings from
falling down. After all, generations of blood, sweat and tears (and building fund contributions) built those buildings. Children were married and baptized in those buildings. Funerals for loved ones were held in those buildings. Faithful people experienced God in those buildings. Letting those buildings go involves grief and pain-not to mention it feels like failure. It's
too bad however that most churches in this situation cannot make the
difficult but healthy choice to let go of the buildings they can no
longer afford and devote their money and energy towards something other
than building preservation.
I am thankful such is not the case at our church. When I interviewed, I asked a lot of questions including ones about the building. I learned about the building campaign in 2005 and the approximately half a million dollars spent on renovations. I learned that continuing maintenance is expensive and it is difficult to find the funds to do that maintenance. (What church with a building these days doesn't have that problem?) Yet,
I also learned that the membership of this congregation has financial
means to do what it wants to do when it is challenged. I
heard what I needed to hear-namely that the building is expensive but
the congregation is not in dire straits (at least not yet) when it comes
to meeting those expenses.
Furthermore, our building is an asset to ministry, because it is beautiful and situated so nicely at the intersection of 65th and Linden Streets, people are attracted to it. We frequently have visitors who drop in out of curiosity just so they can see what goes on in this kind of building. It is not an eyesore. Currently,
we have more space than we really use when you take into consideration
the basement and top floor, but that is more a question of us using our
building intentionally for ministry than an issue of having too much
space.
I believe firmly that the church is more than a building. Without the community of people, the only thing you have is a building and nothing more. The
building, however, can be important to the community of faith and to
the community outside its walls, if it is used for ministry. In my sermon this past Sunday, I quoted from an opinion column by Amy Butler, a Baptist minister in Washington, D.C. She states eloquently why things like a church building and a church staff matter. The following is an excerpt from her column:
I think before we do even one more church budget, we need a whole new framework for thinking about church and ministry.
In
the past we churches thought of ourselves as the backbones of society,
places where good, moral and faithful people gather to pool resources so
we can go out into the world and feed the homeless and convert people
in order to save their souls. Keeping administrative costs as low as
possible would help us to help the needy.
While
many good and righteous things have come out of this view of ourselves,
the truth is that that way of thinking is a pretty arrogant
self-assessment borne out of a climate of popularity and ease.
With
our role in society shifting, we are no longer bastions of benevolent
and overflowing food pantries that we graciously bestow on the less
fortunate and then return to our churches filled with other scrubbed and
spiritual do-gooders to plan new ways to do ministry.
What
we are now is mission outposts. We are islands in a world full of
increasingly adrift people. We are places of solace and hope, community
and hospitality for people who are too smart to believe in God and
pretty convinced they don't need the church - until they do.
I
cannot count the times people who never grew up in church stumble into
worship looking for solace and discover - to their shock and amazement -
liturgy, music and preaching that help them begin to connect with the
tradition of the church and the message of Jesus, things they find they
desperately need in their lives.
Or
the inquiries I get from people looking for a nice staging area for
their wedding, feeling they might vaguely enjoy some kind of traditional
twist on things. After five sessions of required premarital counseling
they begin to discover that maybe spiritual grounding of relationships
has some merit they'd never considered.
How
about the calls from the mayor's office asking for a spiritual
perspective on justice issues in the city? There are plenty of people
around who can offer opinions about what's most politically expedient,
but it turns out that sometimes our leaders want to talk about what it
would look like to do the right thing instead of just the easy thing. So
they come to us.
And
there are the times I get called to do a funeral, visit a hospital or
intervene in a crisis for people I don't know. They call because they
don't know who else to call. The church-free lives they've constructed
don't offer the kind of resources they need to navigate the death of a
child, the loss of a job or the break-up of a marriage.
So they come to church, and when they do they encounter grace-filled community that changes their lives.
All
these things require substantial investment of resources that we have
labeled as "administrative" - pastors, musicians, church staff,
bulletins, air conditioning, janitorial services, capital repairs,
instrument tuning - but all of these things are ministry. In fact,
they're frontline, on the ground, where-the-rubber-meets-the-road kind
of ministry.
How
we go about being church in the world is changing radically. With that
change, now more than ever, our whole life together in faith community
is mission and ministry.
And
we'd better start seeing it that way soon, because the call to live
"Jesus' two Great Commandments" in this world is going to take a heck of
a lot more than our church mission budget line. It's going to take the
full engagement of everything we have.
As
we go through another stewardship campaign, I hope we at CCCUCC will
listen to Butler's words. "Administrative costs" like our building and
our staff matter. When all things are working as they should, the
building and the staff create space for people to find healing, discover
community and experience God. If we really believe that is what we
offer in this community that is our church, then these things are worth
investing in. As you consider what you will give to this community of
faith in 2014, I hope you will consider digging deep, thinking
sacrificially and giving joyfully, because these costs are investments
in making sure there is a church here when people discover they need
one.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
