Introduction

We are continuing our series on paradigm shifts for the church.  We began several weeks ago with an overview of eight different paradigm shifts that will help churches navigate the coming years.  You can find that article here.  This week we look at the seventh paradigm shift for churches: a shift from understanding the church as a building to the church as a community.  The church is not a building; the church is the people.  So many believers mistake the true nature of the church!  We talk about “going to church” or say things like “I will meet you at church.”  While I understand that I may be making a small nuance here, I think it is an important one to make because the church is not a building; it is a people.  We would do well to be more precise in how we both conceptualize and describe the church in this regard.  In my own ministry, I attempted, best I could, to never talk about “going to church.”  If we were to meet in my office I would say “I will meet you at the church building” rather than “let’s meet at church.”  This might seem like a small thing, but it is important—the building is just a building; the church is the people!

This idea comes into play most significantly in how we view the ministry of the church.  Many believers view the church through the lens of the building.  Everything takes place in the building, and for all intents and purposes, the church is synonymous with the building itself.  All the Bible studies, programs, ministries, and services happen at the building, and anything that does not happen at the building is often viewed as not as important.  The danger with this mentality is that there becomes a distinction between the “secular” and the “sacred.”  “Church” now becomes a place that I go to rather than a group of people with whom I meet.  Church becomes something I do rather than something I am a part of or a group to which I belong.  Furthermore, this all happens at a specific location.  Churches that are poised for growth recognize that what we do outside the building on the other six days of the week is important too.  These types of growing ministries view the church not as a building but as a community.  The community does not merely gather on Sundays; that is just when everyone gathers.  But the community is also gathering regularly throughout the week.  These are the people you meet for coffee or lunch; these are the people you invite to your holiday picnic; these are people you fellowship with throughout the week and are all regularly involved in each other’s lives.  For this type of ministry, “church” does not just happen on Sundays, it is ongoing through the week.  Why?  Because the church is not a building, it is a community.  Community does not just happen one time a week, it is ongoing and intentionally happening regularly, even daily during the week.  Far too many people who attend churches today have a one-dimensional relationship with their church—they see the pastor and the people once a week and that is all.  They sit in the pew and look at the pastor, but rarely do they look around to build connections with the other people.  But churches poised for growth recognize that the church needs to be like a web of people who are part of a connective tissue that is being built all throughout the week, not just on Sundays.  Churches that recognize this often have some sort of small group or in-home meetings in attempts to practice the idea that the church is more than a building and that discipleship can take place outside the church walls.  This further helps churches connect outside the four walls of the church building and forces them to build meaningful and lasting relationships with one another.

The difficulty in developing this type of ministry DNA is that it is culture driven.  Churches do not just decide one day to grow in their understanding of community and have it appear overnight.  This is a culture that is nourished and developed, and often it takes many years of intentionality and focus.  In this sense, church leaders must model this themselves.  I have been in churches where the pastor intentionally and strategically modeled this type of “outside the church walls” type of community.  This mentality caught on with the people and it was a blessed experience.  I remember being invited to multiple summer holiday picnics and having to choose which one we would attend.  There were many people who just enjoyed spending time together.  I have also served in churches where the opposite was true.  The pastor’s home was like a sacred haven and rarely would the pastor invite members to his home.  When I took over as pastor following this type of culture, I noticed a stark contrast to what I had experienced elsewhere.  In my first six months not a single church member invited us over to their home, and we realized quickly that if we were going to practice community outside of the church walls, we needed to be very intentional.  As we did this, we experienced interesting reactions from the people.  It was awkward and uncomfortable to be invited over to the pastor’s house, and this was not a mentality with which the church was familiar.  After five years in that church, people did become more comfortable coming to our house, but the actual DNA of the church had changed very little.  People were still very isolated during the week and “church” or “community” was still very much a Sunday thing.  As mentioned above, these types of changes do take time!

Final Thoughts

Churches must begin to embrace a different perspective on the nature of the church.  The church is not about a date and time, it is about people.  The church is not as much a place you go but people you are with.  Genuine Biblical church community must be more than a Sunday experience.  The church seen in the pages of Scripture was an interconnected web of people looking after each other and doing life together.  Churches that embrace this paradigm shift become an interwoven web of believers who love and care about one another, and these types of churches will thrive in the coming years.

Questions to ask of your church:

1) How do you view church?  Is it just a Sunday thing, or does it continue throughout the week?

2) Suppose a visitor came to your church.  How long would it take before someone connected with him or her outside the church walls?  Would a visitor stick around long enough to be connected with your body, or does your lack of community be a deterrent?

3) When was the last time you had someone over to your house, just because?  Is this easy or difficult for you to do?