What is the church?

by the Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton, Assistant to the Bishop of the Southeastern Synod

I was first confronted with this question not in a seminary lecture hall but in a cramped Sunday School room in a tiny Methodist Church in rural North Carolina. I was serving as the "student pastor" of a three church "yoked parish," while attending Duke Divinity School. A young man who had recently graduated from college and come back to the community to teach High School was saying "If we were a real church we would have . . ." At that point I stopped listening. What does he mean "A real church? Of course we're a real church," I fumed.

But I knew what he meant. He meant a "full service" church; one with nursery and youth group and robed choir and men's breakfast and a large fellowship hall and a gymnasium and . . . . , well you can fill in the blanks.

When I got home that night, I went into the church office (which was also our spare bedroom) and I sat down at my desk and pulled down some theology books to help me think about this question, "What is the church?" What do we have to have or be or do to "really" BE the Church of Jesus Christ.

Well, Article 13 of the Methodist Articles of Religion says, the church is where "the pure Word of God is preached and the sacraments duly administered," exactly the same thing the 39 Articles of the Church of England says, which is not surprising since the Methodist Church began within the Anglican Church. And if this sounds familiar, it should, since the framers of the 39 Articles were deeply influenced by the Lutheran movement's Augsburg Confession, which in Article VII says the church is "the assembly of the saints in which the Gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are administered rightly."

Up until that night I probably agreed with that young man that my churches weren't "real churches," not that I would have said it out loud, or used those words to talk about it. But, no matter how I said it, the implication would have been that they were less than they should have been; that they were inadequate and faulty for not being and doing everything that bigger and more moneyed congregations were and did.

I thought of that night and that new understanding this last Sunday as I preached at Crowell's Chapel near Shelbyville, TN. Crowell's was founded in 1825 and in the 185 years since has never been real big.

But it has always been faithful to its primary task: preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments. Through wars and droughts and economic turmoil, it has sometimes prospered and sometimes suffered but it has always served. Rooted in a people and a place, it is a continuing presence of the Body of Christ for those around it.

This is what all churches, from the smallest to the largest are called to be and do. It does not matter how big your building is or how active your programs are, if Gospel and sacraments are not at your core, at your center, you are not the church. And it doesn't matter how modest your facility or how sparse your crowds; if Christ is being presented, then Christ is present and you are the Church in that place. Thank you, Crowell's Chapel, for your many years of service and for reminding me of this basic truth.