A Church Without Walls

Imagine, if you will, a father wakes his children in the morning with a light rap on the door.  It's barely light; the sun has only begun to yawn, the clouds are still rosy and the children, rapt with Sugar Plum Fairies, are grumbling about the early start to the day.  The father, full of anxious expectation, throws open the curtains, eyes aglow and announces to the kids, "Today is the day we begin something new!"

The children, still adjusting to the hour, groggily wipe the sleep from their eyes.  "What are we doing today, Dad?"

"Well," he says rubbing his hands together as if a meal has been placed on the table in front of him, "We're going to build something new, something different, something immense!"  This statement grabs the children's attention, and with new energy, they throw their legs over the side of the bed, put their slippers on, and bound to their father who has already exited the room.  As they pass down the hallway, the children, a brother and sister, whisper excitedly about what kind of construction could be taking place.  A doll house?  New cabinets for the pantry?  A shed?  Maybe even a new play room!  As they reach the living room, their father is standing beside the front bay window.  His smile is wide and his hands are already reaching for the curtains.

"What is it!" The children shout excitedly.

The father throws open the curtains and they see the immense oak tree in the front yard which stands sentinel over their house.  It has been their constant shade, their toy and their protection for all of their years.  "Yes?" they ask again.

"Imagine this," the father says as he begins by waving his arms in the air painting ideas like images on a canvas, "that instead of having just the old oak tree in the front, we actually have..." he calls for a drum roll which they supply, "A tree house!"

The children are ecstatic.  They begin jumping around the room hugging each other like they haven't in years.  A tree house!  Think of all the things that they could do!  Immediately, after their brief explosion of joy, they settle themselves at the coffee table, grab a notebook and begin to sketch their plans for their new creation.  The one that will produce and protect their joy until they become disillusioned adults.

"Here is where we'll have the living area," the boy says as he draws a large central space between the boughs.

"And here," the sister points to a branch farther out, "Is where the ladder will go - way up high!"  Their excitement is only barely contained by their imagination, and as they continue to draw, their own plans for the tree house grow bigger than the actual tree itself.  The father, watching bemusedly, crosses his arms and then pulls a piece of paper from his pocket.  As he sits down, he pulls the plans of the children from in front of them and lays them aside.

"Actually," the father says to the children as he puts his own paper in front of them, "these are the plans we'll be using.  I drew these up with the help of a great architect."  He begins showing them the plans - they are somewhat confused by the architectural language, but they are intrigued by the size and scope, but as they look between the father's blueprint and their own imagination, they feel a pang of disappointment that they weren't involved in the planning.

"And," the father continues, "I know that because you two are young and inexperienced, you'll need quite a bit of help so..." he points back to the window where some people have already arrived, "I've called in some of the neighbours to build it.  Now, the children are confused.  What had started out as a thrilling morning of shared vision and building, was now a project to be completed independently of the children.

"What do you think?" the father asks with great joy.

What would you think?

This story is an image of a biblical story from I Chronicles.  At the end of his life, David is about to die and return to his Father, but he wants to pass on what he believes is his ultimate representation of his life's work.  When the idea first came to David for a temple, David wanted to build a house for God, but, as I wrote in the last blog, the Temple of Jerusalem, would not be a place where God is contained, but where his name would rest - like all places of worship.  Solomon knew this already, and even after it was built, in his message to Hiram he explains the purpose of the Temple:

(2 Chron. 2:5,6)

 'The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods.  But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?  Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him?'

But in proposing the Temple to Solomon, it's interesting how David passed on his ideas:

(1 Chronicles 28:10-12a)

Consider now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house as the sanctuary.  Be strong and do the work.  Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement.  He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord...

To me, it doesn't read as if Solomon was consulted on the plans for the temple, only that David was passing over what was in his mind that the Spirit had placed there.  Now of course, I'm not putting down the plans of the Spirit - not by any means - but is it not possible that the Spirit could have spoken to, and through, Solomon also about his own reflection of what the Temple would look like?  Could Solomon, the representative of the next generation of leadership, have been invited into the discussion for the House of God's Name?

To top it all off, after David had given his plans to Solomon with a stern encouragement to be faithful, David gathers the entire assembly, the entire Ecclesia (or Church) and says to them, "My son, Solomon, the one whom God has chosen, is young and inexperienced... (1 Chron. 29:1a). It can be inferred, as David tells the assembly that because of Solomon's youth and inexperience, Solomon cannot do this task, so they must do it for him.

Now, I'm all for sharing the labour and allowing the church to use their gifts, but why not let Solomon lead this part?  So what if he is young and inexperienced?  Maybe he might bring some new perspective, or some new energy to the old ways of doing things?

And so it happens in our contemporary churches.  When it comes to building and sustaining the new Church, we often engage the youth and young adults in the excitement of constructing something new, perhaps even a new understanding of community where God's name will be perpetually present, but then we hand over our own plans to them. Even though the Spirit has worked diligently in our own generation, can the Spirit work just as (or even more) powerfully in the next generation - a mobile generation that sees relatively little import in membership to a specific location or building, but belonging in a community?  This current generation seems to value connections much more than denominational fences.  While Baby Boomers and Gen Xers get distracted by worship style, Powerpoints and the colour of the carpeting, the next generations are focussing on how we can live a life worthy of the calling of the Gospel of Christ and be faithful to Law while rejoicing in the Gospel.

As the next wave of generational humanity sweeps across the earth, it's my great hope and prayer that we sit with them in the building process, give them the crayons and the stories of the past, and allow them to draw a picture of the future of the Church.  We, as this current generation in leadership, have our own patterns of what seemed to work in evangelism and teaching (and many things that did not - especially for Gen Y, Millenials and beyond), but allowing these next generations to take ownership of their architectural blue prints for A Church Without Walls - that is exciting for me.

Take a read through the last chapters of 1 Chronicles and reimagine how we might be passing on the leadership without our own strings.