GodReflection: Power Words

Church is an enigma to me.

I understand church as Christ body. The church is the bride of Jesus. He loved the church to the extent he refused to call thousands of angels to save him from crucifixion.

I understand the church as perfection. We join with the church of all history made clean and perfect through Jesus sacrificial blood. Jesus will return one day to escort his church to life on a new earth with a new heaven.

My NIV Bible uses the word church at least 108 times from The Acts of the Apostles through the Book of Revelation. Those verses paint the story of an infant church learning to walk with Jesus.

Church is the designation in the New Testament for all united with Jesus. Church is a word of power.

Jesus church moves throughout the New Testament to its victorious climax in the book of Revelation.

Here is what bothers me.

It is as if it were in my DNA to view church as a network of institutions rather than the body of Jesus serving in our world.

My culture promotes the institutional view rather than the Jesus view. A diversity of buildings erected across cities of the world stand witness to differences held as important. Few differences—if any—are traceable to Jesus.

Through a notable show of disharmony, the divided institutional churches set rules to keep insiders in and outsiders out. This process took two-thousand years. However, it is remarkably effective.

I received many unique experiences as a son of a carpenter/contractor growing up in the desert of New Mexico. One such experience centered on an eccentric second cousin artist and her adobe home.

Adobe construction is rather common across the Southwestern United States. In New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, the mixture of sand and clay bricks dates back to the use by Anasazi Indians whose culture appeared about the time that Jesus lived in Palestine.

Those who live in adobe homes praise their coolness during the hot summer months and bask in their warmth held in by adobe bricks in the cold of winter.

It is common to cover the bricks with a smooth plaster and paint the exterior of the home from a select hue of earth tones. It makes a unique and beautiful architectural structure.

Now, let’s go back to my eccentric second cousin and here adobe home.  Her task for my contractor dad was to remove plaster and paint without damage to the original adobe brick and then apply a sealant to avoid deterioration.

The solution was a high compression tank that would blast sand against the walls to strip away all paint and plaster. The result was perfectly exposed smooth adobe brick.

I want church to be a word of power in my life.

Sometimes, I wish I could sandblast church. I wish church to be cleared of its barnacles.

I want to be church as Jesus envisioned. I too need to be cleared of barnacles.

I want to be the body of Christ.

I don’t want to see church as the definition of differences plastered onto its walls by divisive viewpoints.

Why can’t I sandblast away the distractions and just be a fully committed follower of Jesus who goes about daily life as Jesus heart, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his ears, and his love for Father God?

Wouldn’t that transform church into a power word in my life?

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection on Church as a Power Word

Gary@Godreflection.org