This may be the best phrase I have heard all month. Church as a verb. The Network leader who said it, said it with the best of intentions. He was responding to a story of God showing up, in the least likely of places and in the most unexpected ways, for someone who wasn’t looking for God, but who recognized Him anyway. Church as the place where God shows up. It’s what God wants most for us, I think.
Another Network member said recently that we are all living in a “hyper-vigilant, biological roller coaster” right now. That feels like an apt way to describe the world and how most of us are experiencing it. It also sounds like a place where being “churched” would be welcome. I am encouraged that so many Network leaders I am talking to are describing “blessings coming out of nowhere.” They are seeing evidence of God, His hand at work, in places they did not expect it. I am encouraged by that.
Other Network leaders are spending a lot of time looking for evidence of God. Where are they finding it? One describes it as “trying to look behind the curtain,” behind what people and organizations are portraying on the surface, behind the masks we all put on when we are enduring stress. Another has said they are practicing what they call, reading “digital body language,” working hard at deciphering the clues that come across digital platforms in a much different way than they do in person. Which reminds me that I need to be mindful of what I am conveying through the screen. Am I putting up a curtain? Making it harder for someone to see behind it?
Which brings me back to being “churched.” What if church was not a building? What if church was not an organization? What if church was a waying of seeing the evidence of God in each other? What if it was love?