Lately, we've been discussing "the church" and what the church is and what the church should be in our Bible Studies and Sunday night services. The church is not a building. The church is not an idea. The church is not a denomination or a sign out front. The church is God empowering His people to love others and to share with them the awesome power of the resurrected Christ.

I have been trying to get the point across that we don't "go" to church -- we "are" the church, regardless of whether we meet in the largest sanctuary in town or in a borrowed business or in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

The question that we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis is, "Am I being the church or am I just going to church?" Can you imagine what a difference it would make if people would stop looking at church as a Sunday morning form of entertainment and started looking at it as a lifestyle and a calling and a responsibility?

The early Christians turned the world upside-down through their faith and their love lived out in action. Why aren't we seeing this today? Because for too many years we have gone to church and not been the church. Let's make a difference today.

I ran across this article on Huffington Post's Religion Page the other day, and thought it was very much in line with what we had been teaching and striving for at Koinonia. I thought it really showed what happened when the church left the building and started living for Christ by putting their faith into action.

Rev. Bowman speaks from her experience at seeing and being the church in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.

-----------------------------------------------
"When the Church Shows Up" by Rev. Gail Bowman

"When the church shows up by praying for you, long and hard, that seemingly mundane practice takes on shocking substance, picks you up off the floor, and carries you around town. When the church shows up by acting on your behalf, that means the situation is pretty darn serious and while you may have been a giver of help before, you are a recipient of help now, and some humility and grace on your part is warranted. When the church shows up and disagrees with you about what to do next in your situation, that probably means that your clear recollection of what once was is not pertinent in a conversation about what needs to be. When the church shows up bringing you everything from tiny handmade prayer mats to hymnals newly returned from retirement, it means that for the rest of your days you will have precious things with a value that may be invisible to anybody but you. When the church shows up, you are encountering those who believe that people-helping-people is not just generous/fair/appropriate; they believe it's holy. Welcome, now, the change of lens.

"Church is supposed to be about "things hoped for" and "things not seen," and it's good at encouraging that murky "here but not here, now but not now" walk of faith. But the church walked into a whole bunch of lives and situations in this area, and it did so physically, actually and really -- chewing gum and gutting houses and ignoring blueprints and slinging hammers and pausing at mid-day to pray like it was Sunday then going right back to work again. I still don't know quite what to make of this, or quite what to tell young people who were 12 or 14 or 16 when Katrina happened. How can I capture both how real and practical and messy it was and is, and how stunning it also was and is? Maybe I'll just begin by saying, "I like church.""