Why I'm doing the happy dance

I've noticed a tendency to say just enough in a Facebook/Twitter status update to give people ideas. I didn't mean to be cryptic...it just takes a lot more than a line or two to explain what's on my mind. But I posted an update last week that deserves to be expanded on: Alan is doing the happy dance because my church is really a church. What the heck does that mean?

If you've seen the church building, or even pictures of it, you might think it's strange for me to have any doubts. Central Christian is as churchy-looking a church as you could ever hope for: stone walls, steeple, big stained glass windows, high roofs. How could it be anything but a church?

The thing is that a church isn't a building at all. In the New Testament, a church is a group of people--a group of people called together by God to be "the body of Christ." That's a tough phrase to explain, but I think it means that a when you run into a church--a group of people--you should get a glimpse of God working in the world. When you meet a church, you should be able to tell that something incredible is moving within and through them--and that presence of God should cut across all the different human categories: race, style, age, dress, money, class...if you walk into a church, you can be surrounded by people who are nothing like you and find out that you're right at home.

The sad truth is that a lot of the groups of people who meet in impressive religious buildings aren't churches by that definition. And I was pretty sure that my church really was a church, but it was hard to know because "everyone" in my small town has known that Central Christian is a church for the right kind of person ("right" in this case meaning "at the top of the social ladder in Connersville, Indiana). And those prejudices were strong enough that it's taken months before people who were really on the outside came in--people who, if you took a picture of the church, you would be able to pick out of our usual crowd.

Now those people didn't "come in." People don't just come in to a big, impressive, church building. They practically have to be dragged in--not by force, but by a deep and powerful caring. People don't accept that invitation to "come to church" doesn't mean anything unless they already believe that you--the person doing the inviting--really cares about them.

But after that...I watched the people in my church walk up to the strangers who came to see them, smiling, welcoming them, and being genuinely glad that they were there--not because they would add to the church, but just because they wanted to share the joy they felt with another person. They made God's presence known to those visitors, those strangers, who left saying, "I want what those people have." What do we have? Nothing of our own...just God. And so there's one more person today who got a little taste of what God can do, thanks to this church that I've been given the chance to serve.