Looking back on it now, I see I made a rookie mistake.  Believe it or not, I thought I had a neat message to teach the kids that Sunday in worship about thirteen years ago.  There I was standing right over there, naively asking the kids what I thought was a perfectly wonderful question which would open up their eyes.  “What’s the first thing you think of when you think of church?” I asked.  I admit, I was expecting the kind of insightful answers that kids just have a knack for saying.  Well, if you were here that morning, you know how it turned out.  I can almost see the event transpire in slo-mo even now in my mind’s eye.  It was like I threw a hanging curve to a power hitter just waiting on it.   I asked the question “what’s the first thing you think of when you think of church?”  One of the children quickly answered “Boooooorrrriiinnnnnng!”  Kids say the darndest things, right?  John Reynolds shared with me some wisdom as he left that morning that remains with me to this day – “never ask a kid an open-ended question if you’re not willing to hear their answers.”

  You know, looking back on it, maybe the root problem wasn’t entirely that it was an open-ended question.  Maybe the problem was that I really wanted to ask it to us, the adults.  In hindsight, I see that what I was doing that morning one of those things that you never really should do – use the children’s sermon as a means to reach adults.  So, I return to that question now nearly thirteen years removed from my “rookie” mistake.  “What’s the first thing YOU think of when YOU think of church?”  (Hopefully it’s NOT booorrrinnnngggg, by the wayJ)

  Maybe some of y’all are thinking of church as this building which is, indeed glorious.  And yes, in some sense, this is where the church meets but no, it’s not “the church”, not really.  Not in the way the writers of the New Testament spoke of it.  Perhaps some of you would locate “the church” in a shared set of beliefs.  Again, you’d be close but not quite right entirely.  The church does need shared beliefs because they assist our understanding of a wonderful God but they aren’t the church.  Maybe you’re thinking that the church is the gathering of brothers and sisters in Christ as they congregate together to worship the Lord.  You’d be getting warmer but I still don’t think you’d fully be right. 

  Church, in the basic New Testament sense, is a people but specifically, it’s a people in motion.  It’s a people being sent out to minster and proclaim the name of the Lord.  Church is simply this – the people of God joyfully, actively, daily going out into the world to witnessing together to the Kingdom of God through acts of ministry in Jesus’ name.  That’s what church is.  But too often we’ve gotten sidetracked from that, haven’t we?

  We’ve made church about a thousand things other than what it’s meant to be.  I wonder sometimes if all the stuff we think is “church” is just a grand, self-serving distraction.  Do y’all know the term “busy work?”  Too often we within the church universal engage in “busy work” to keep us sufficiently occupied to keep us from doing what, at some level, frightens us.  Being sent to minister in the name of Jesus Christ.  I certainly understand that.  I understand that ministering to others in Christ’s name is a daunting task.  Few of us doubt that God wants to send us.  But when it comes to being sent, our anxieties make us natural born procrastinators.  So, like I said, we come up with busy work or maybe we make excuses when it comes to being sent.

  Older folks tend to say – “My circle of friends is set, I don’t encounter people like the younger folks or I don’t have the energy.”  Younger folks seem to say “with the children and their activities, I just don’t have time to do anything else.  Or they say “I have too much work to do.”  No matter how young or how old, we all have a fairly predictable set of excuses we use.  They all add up to us hearing God’s sending command and essentially saying “no, not right now.”  Definitely someday, we think, when the kids are grown or I’m in better physical shape or my health issues are gone.  Then I’ll gladly go wherever God calls me.

  But you see to know Jesus Christ personally is to have our entire lives reoriented by Him.  When we encounter the Living Lord we know deep down in our hearts that we’re know that He offers love in everlasting abundance.  Provision beyond our ability to comprehend.  Jesus gives us grace upon grace so that in life or in death we know that we are utterly, entirely His and that nothing in this world or what lies beyond can ever separate us from Him.  But when Jesus appears and fills your heart with His love, make no mistake about it – you’re just gonna go wherever He’s sending you.  It’s irresistible.  It’s been that way since way back.    

  You see, God’s been sending His people since He spoke to a wandering Aramean in the land of Haran.  God speaks in Genesis 12 and says to Abram:  “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  And it all begins!  God’s people are sent in motion to be a blessing to the nations.