The church is a people, not a place or a statistic. It’s a body, united into him who is the head. It’s a family, joined together by adoption through Christ. I pray that we pastors would increasingly recognize our awesome responsibility for the particular flocks over which God has made us undershepherds.

A Jarring Conversation

During my graduate studies, I remember one conversation with a friend who worked for a Christian ministry that was not affiliated with any one church. He and I did attend the same church for a couple of years. But while I joined the church as a member, my friend didn’t. In fact, he only came for the Sunday morning service and would slip in about halfway through, just in time for the sermon.

One day, I decided to ask him about his half-hearted attendance. “I don’t really get anything out of the rest of the service,” he replied.

“Have you ever thought of joining the church?” I asked.

He appeared genuinely surprised by my question and responded, “Join the church? I honestly don’t know why I would do that. I know what I’m here for, and those people would just slow me down.”

As far as I could tell, he didn’t say those words disdainfully, but with the genuine zeal of a gifted evangelist who did not want to waste one hour of the Lord’s time. He had given some thought to what he was looking for in a church. And on the whole it didn’t involve the other members of the church, at least not that church. He wanted a place where he could hear good preaching from God’s word and get his spiritual jolt for the week.

Yet his words reverberated in my mind—“Those people would just slow me down.” There were a number of things I wanted to say, but all I said was, “Did you ever think that if you linked arms with those people, yes, they may slow you down, but you may help to speed them up? Have you thought that might be a part of God’s plan for them, and for you?”

I, too, wanted a church where I could hear good preaching every Sunday. But the words “body of Christ” mean more than just that, don’t they?

A People, Not a Place

The church is not a place. It’s not a building. It’s not a preaching point. It’s not a spiritual service provider. It’s a people—the new-covenant, blood-bought people of God. That’s why Paul said, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). He didn’t give himself up for a place, but for a people.

That’s why the church I pastor starts its Sunday morning gatherings not by saying, “Welcome to Capitol Hill Baptist Church,” but “Welcome to this gathering of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church.” We are a people who gather. Yes, this is a small thing, but we’re trying to point to a big reality even in the words we use to welcome people.

Remembering that the church is a people should help us recognize what’s important and what’s not important. I know I need the help. For example, I have a temptation to let something like the style of music dictate how I feel about a church. After all, the style of music a church uses is one of the first things we will notice about any church, and we tend to respond to music at a very emotional level. Music makes us feel a certain way. Yet what does it say about my love for Christ and for Christ’s people if I decide to leave a church because of the style of its music? Or if, when pastoring a church, I marginalize a majority of my congregation because I think the style of music needs to be updated?

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