Called to be the Church
September 1st, 2008I am finishing a sermon series on the Book of Acts I’ve entitled, “Called to be the Church.” I have borrowed this title from a fine book by Rob Wall and Anthony Robinson by the same name. While I have preached an occasional text from the Book of Acts before (Acts 2 always seems to roll around during Pentecost for some reason), I have never spent any extended time preaching Acts. Perhaps I was afraid of the “Signs and Wonders” glasses through which many read Acts in the eighties and nineties? Whatever the case, I regret that I have not done this before now. As I approach my last of fourteen consecutive sermons from the Book of Acts, I am going to miss living with this incredible story of the founding, expansion, and ultimately missional expansion of the church week-in and week-out.
As I look back over my ministry in various churches, I have been been given a glimpse of this dynamic quality of the community of faith “being the church” on rare occasions. I don’t know if this was because I was too busy promoting some program to pay attention to what the Holy Spirit was doing or because there was a deficit of the church actually being the church. I suspect it was a little of both. But for the purposes of my reflection in this piece, imagine with me what the church would actually look like if it overwhelmingly decided it wanted to be the church.
The first characteristic of a church being the church would be a community of ordinary people who place all their eggs in creating opportunities for God to transform people’s lives. From the first page to the last in the Book of Acts, this is what happened in abundance. Regular people. Screwed up people. Selfish people all discovering the power of God’s transforming vision for the kingdom. If the Church wants to be the Church again, we need to put this high on our list of priorities.
The second characteristic of the church being the church doesn’t stop at transformation but recognizes that part of the task of the church is to take transformed people and guide them in the formational practices of Jesus. Back in the eighties we talked about this as discipleship. Whatever we call it, can you imagine what the church would look like if its members engaged in some of the practices of spiritual formation on a routine basis? I get a shiver every time I witness the occasional church member wrestling with the meaning of his or her faith in the midst of some of the mundane experiences of their life. A congregation of transformed people who don’t give attention to the formation of their faith is mere spiritual enthusiasm. But a congregation that is learning to be the church knows that transformation is always followed by formation.
The final characteristic of the church being the church that is evident on every page of the Book of Acts is mission. I’m not talking about sending a proportion of the churches budget to support foreign missionaries through the denominational budget (although there is nothing wrong with this). Instead, I’m thinking about a congregation that sees the the purpose of transformation and formation always resulting in an expanded mission and vision for God’s kingdom. Whether that is having a cup of coffee with a friend who is struggling in their marriage or serving the community through the local community association, mission is an active expression of a transformed life.
Transformation, formation, mission. If the church desires to “be the church”, I have a hunch it includes these three characteristics regardless of what you call it. I want to be part of a community of faith that takes all these seriously. I want to consider deeply what this means for my life alongside those in my congregation that want to do likewise. I want my vision to be over-layed with with a vision of the kingdom that is so expansive and integral to my ordinary life that I wouldn’t know what to do without it. There are many reasons why one might argue that the sooner the contemporary church dies the better off we’ll all be. I am optimistic that if and when the churches we are part of begin to capture a vision of God’s kingdom that exhibits transformation, formation, and mission, we will indeed turn our communities upside-down.







