The church...

Something I wrote for our church when we had a service at Fallasburg Part...I just revisited it and it was a good reminder of what's what and who's who. I get swallowed into a modern/post-modern mindset of church so easily...maybe you do to...

Acts 14:26-28
“On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them…”

The reason I love this verse is because you clearly cannot gather a building together…this can only be describing people. This may be a news flash for you, but the church has always been about people. Four people. Forty people. Four-hundred people. Four-thousand people. It makes no difference. Wherever the people are, that’s where the church is.

The building is to the church what the body is to the spirit. It only resides there; it is never to be confused for being the thing itself. Maybe the confusion stems from how we talk about the church. “Where do you go to church?” “At our church we have rockin’ worship!” “Did you hear they are building a new church over at Impact?” I’m sure this is where the breakdown occurs. When this is how you define it, you confine it. The church is not a place…and, for the record, it is not a person…it is a people.

We gather today not at Impact, but as Impact. Buildings are torn down and burnt to the ground, but the Bible says even the gates of Hell cannot prevail against the church. You can shut up the doors, but you cannot shut up the heart. Regardless of what happens to the property…the church moves on.

The church gathers together weekly to share in God’s greatness. It’s not a monument to gather under, it’s a movement to get caught up into! When the church gathers and unites, there is no stopping the church…it will accomplish the purpose that Jesus died to perpetuate in the world.

And that is why we gather today…as Impact. Because no building will ever define or confine us. No prescription or description will hold us inside four walls. This is worship without walls. This is movement without measurement. This is people without property. This is God’s church…we are Impact.

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Get a load of these verses…
Romans 1:23
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

...
Psalm 98:7-9
“Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the Lord.”


My personal rendering of this passage…
“That sound you hear…that is the sea singing a symphony to God…resounding with the loudest voice you’ve ever heard in your entire life. And just when you thought your ears deceived you, the world whispers words to accompany the sound of the seven seas. The rivers rejoice with an applause that builds to a climax drowning out the music of the mountains. It’s like creation is chanting back and forth in its adoration and adulation of how great God is until all you hear is a holy roar exploding from the earth heralding the presence of a God so good that even creation can’t hold it together. And you thought only people worshipped.”
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Here’s the deal…as we gather today, don’t think for a second that worship is simply singing on Sunday morning…it’s so much more. Worship is in the rustling of leaves, the rippling of streams, and the ripening of an apple. When we box God into an hour on Sunday Morning, we commit the gravest crime imaginable. Take a look around you right now and soak in the song of creation.

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Some of my favorite quotes on Worship:

"The humblest and the most unseen activity in the world can be the true worship of God. Work and worship literally become one. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever; and man carries out that function when he does what God sent him into the world to do. Work well done rises like a hymn of praise to God. This means that the doctor on his rounds, the scientist in her laboratory, the teacher in his classroom, the musician at her music, the artist at his canvas, the shop assistant at his counter, the typist at her typewriter, the housewife in her kitchen -- all who are doing the work of the world as it should be done are joining in a great act of worship."
- William Barclay

"When I worship, I would rather my heart be without words than my words be without heart."
- Lamar Boschman

"Worship is celebration. All of life is a festival: being persuaded that God is everywhere present on all sides, we praise him as we till the ground, we sing hymns as we sow the seed, we feel his inspiration in all we do."
- Clement of Alexander

"To worship is experience reality, to touch life. It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. It is breaking into the shekinah (glory) of God, or better yet, being invaded by the shekinah of God."
- Richard Foster

"Worship is a lifestyle not an event!"
-Chuck Woolley

"Worship is celebration. All of life is a festival: being persuaded that God is everywhere present on all sides, we praise him as we till the ground, we sing hymns as we sow the seed, we feel his inspiration in all we do."
- Clement of Alexander

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