BEING Church
We are standing on the stage of the Germiston city hall. Hundreds of refugees are sitting hopelessly around. Children and babies are sitting on their mother’s laps, people are tired and a few volunteers and government officials are trying to organize something out of the chaos. A lot of organizations, offices and people drops off supplies (very random supplies I might add!). And everything is placed on the stage in no particular order. So, when we arrived (a few young people from Pretoria), we start to pack clothes and food into different heaps. Basically we were just trying to sort some stuff out for them. And while I am standing there in the semi-dark Friday late afternoon, I think to myself: “Where is the rest of the church?”. And I don’t mean the institution (who was very busy thinking and making decisions about it). I was talking about the church, us, brothers and sisters – trained up to be the hands and feet! The Revolutionaries (as Barna calls them). The believers. The faithful. Where were they?
You see it is easy to DO church! We drop of the blankets, the food and the cheque at the offices of the church. Then you have done your part of DOING church. But there where people needs love, needs to tell someone there children are gone, their husband has been killed or all they have has been stolen – there we are too afraid to go. And the irony is that when you ask the church where they are, they are busy in that week DOING meetings, DOING training, DOING worship, DOING Biblestudy, DOING events…. (What for? I wondered to myself).
I am the last one to judge. I am seriously into DOING church myself. But after this experience, after reading Paul some more, after looking at Jesus – I realized again we need to BE church. And there is a serious difference. When you start BEING church, you are driven by the passion of understanding the mystery of Christ’s love. You are excited about BEING there where Jesus would have been. You take the money. You don’t just drop it off. You put the blanket around her body, sit next to her and listen. You pick him up, put the bottle in his mouth and give his mom a time to rest.
I can’t help but ask myself – what are we busy DOING to ourselves
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