Remember what another player said when we won a game-turning pot and wrote "PTL"? That player replied, "I don't do church."
That invites the question: what is a church, anyway? Is it a place where you go to hear a sermon and act "religious" on a weekend? Or is it more than that?
The Bible has verses indicate a "church" can indeed be a place....
...I am writing to God's church in Corinth and to all of his holy people throughout Greece. - II Corinthians 1:1 (NLT)Several New Testament verses mention churches in specific cities. But look at how I Corinthians ends....
The churches here in the province of Asia send greetings in the Lord, as do Aquila and Priscilla and all the others who gather in their home for church meetings. - I Corinthians 16:19 (NLT)
This was no "house game." That couple had one of the original "house churches" - hosting fellow believers in their home. In fact, our review of the New Testament found no definitive place where a "church building" existed at all. We don't think such buildings are wrong, but that's not how the early church began.
Yet the church is more than a location. Jesus showed that in giving advice about disputes:
If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won't accept the church's decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. - Matthew 18:17 (NLT)
Here the "church" becomes like a tribunal which might hear an appeal of a poker hand - a group of people making decisions. That's one of the things a church does. We'll see what else it does in a future post.
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