I have a friend who collects Star Wars toys. He keeps them all in pristine condition, safely wrapped within their original packaging. And while his collection is expansive (and expensive), I can’t help but think he’s kind of missed the point. I mean, what good is a toy if you never take it out of the box?
I suppose the same could be said for the church.
We have some beautiful church buildings in this city, and I know there are a lot of people who lament the fact that we can’t use them right now. I do, too. As a pastor, I look forward to the day we can worship face-to-face in our sanctuaries again. But while our buildings stand empty and unused, I want to remind us that our buildings have never been the church – they are just the boxes that hold the church when its gathers. WE are the church, and I have to admit that the church has been far more active and effective at loving our community since we’ve been forced out of our boxes.
During this time, we don’t have the luxury to sit back and wait for our neighbors to come wandering into our doors on Sundays. We have had to get creative. And let me tell you, I’m in awe of the myriad ways the Church in Costa Mesa has united to care for our neighbors.
For instance, several churches in our city united together to organize a fund to help the most financially impacted members of our city, and they seeded it with $80,000 of their own money. Then they got the word out, and people from the church community all across our city added over $400,000. To date, nearly 500 hurting families in our city have been helped with grants because of the Enough For All Fund (see enoughforallfund.com to donate or apply).
We also rallied together to provide basic resources for neighbors in need. Currently through an initiative called Love Costa Mesa, we are providing hundreds of boxes of food to needy families in our community each week. This has been done in partnership with local nonprofits like Trellis and Fresh Beginnings Ministries (see LoveCostaMesa.org for more details).
Then there are the prayer initiatives. Early on, when it dawned on many of the pastors that we would still be quarantined through Easter, we launched a 3-week prayer initiative. Dozens of churches participated and hundreds of people prayed for our city around the clock for three solid weeks. Then, after Easter, we broadened the invitation to the churches in our County. Ultimately, over 150 churches all across Orange County joined in a 5-day prayer gathering, which included nightly worship and prayer gatherings hosted by different cities.
Talk about unity!
I guess we had to get outside of our boxes to start being able to play well with one another. I’m glad we have, because we’re so much better when we work together.
It’s kind of sad that it takes a pandemic like this one to think outside of the box, but it’s nothing new. Even the early church struggled to get out of their box. Shortly after his resurrection, Jesus told his followers that once His Spirit empowered them, they would be his witnesses starting there in Jerusalem, and radiating out into the wider region of Judea, to the untouchables of Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth. But even after the Spirit came, the believers stayed put in Jerusalem. I suppose it was more appealing to congregate with people who thought and acted like they did than to move into unfamiliar territory. But that wasn’t what Jesus had called them to do. He’d called them to GO! In the end, it took major persecution to push them out of their box and into the wider world, but once that happened the church exploded.
I sense that something similar is happening here. God has ripped open our boxes, shaken us out into our neighborhoods and said, “Now do what I made you to do. Love your neighbors, move toward the hurting, bind up the broken, share with the needy. Don’t just talk about it – do it!”
And we're actually doing it! The church is radiating the love of Jesus into our city like I’ve never seen before. I pray that we won’t stop once this crisis passes. I pray we will continue to work together irrespective of what “church building” we call home. After all, there’s only one Church in our city and Jesus is the head of it, so we might as well stop competing against one another and keep working together.
In short, I look forward to the day we can gather in our churches again, but I don’t want to just go back to how things always were. The stakes are too high; there are far too many hurting people in our communities to simply rush back into the safety of our buildings and get comfortable.
We were never made to stay in our box.
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