Not only am I serving as a new start pastor with the Sellwood Faith Community, but I also get to serve an existing congregation half time. This is a lovely group of folks who are trying to discern God’s call for their future. Recently we had a good conversation about the word church. Sometimes we use it to refer to the building, sometimes we use it to refer to a specific faith community, sometimes we use it to talk about our regional denominational body, and at other times we mean all Christian faith communities. All of these are in some sense church and all of them have times of importance. What we came to at the gathering I was at is the sense that the community of faith, the people are what matters the most. None of the rest of it the buildings, the denominations, would exist with out the people who love and live as community.
This notion is captured beautifully in a song I learned as a child in sunday school, I Am The Church.
I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together.
All who follow Jesus, all around the world.
Yes, we’re the church together.
It also fits the little finger play I learned back then,
here is the steeple,
open the doors and see all the people.
Yes the word church is used for the building, but it’s not an empty building, but one full of moving people.
As we continue to discern what’s next in ministry here at SFC and at the established church, Capitol Hill, this idea of being about people, about community is at the center of our call. We want to be about the here and now, the way God is at work in and through us. Within this ministry of presence God calls us to the wider world. We engage there through our thirst for justice, our prayers for those we will never meet, and our gifts both financial and of our service.
We are the people, we are the church, we are the holy community of love. It is a beautiful thing.
-E
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