Nine Years Of Getting Ready To Be A Church

When we get a proper space.

When there are enough of us to run it properly. When there is somebody to help with the young ones. When we are not doing it in a living room with the sofa pushed against the wall.

He has said all of those out loud in that room, more than once, for nine years.

And every single one of them has a room in it that is not this one.

Here is what happened last Thursday.

Somebody prayed. A woman who does not usually say anything prayed about eleven sentences, and it went through him, and it was the sort of thing you remember for a long time.

And while she was praying, he was already thinking about how they would do that properly one day. When there was a space. When there was somebody on sound. When there were enough people that a prayer like that would land in a room instead of a front room.

He missed it. He was in the room and he missed it.

He has thought about that every day since.

Because when he went back and looked, he could not find a single occasion in nine years when he had been all the way present in that living room. Not one. There has always been a better version of it running about four seconds ahead of the actual one, and he has been living in that better version, and it does not exist.

If you have been getting ready for nine years, come in and take a mug. Somebody has sat on the guitar again and nobody is starting anything yet.

The first word of that sentence

There is a line about what a group of Christians actually is, and the argument is settled by the first word.

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.1 Corinthians 12:27

Now.

Not shall be. Not are becoming. Not will one day be recognized as. Now, in the present tense, addressed to people in a room.

And it is worth knowing who he is writing to. That church was a mess. They were arguing about leaders, tolerating things nobody should tolerate, getting the Lord's table wrong, and competing over gifts. If any congregation in the New Testament could reasonably have been told they were nearly there, it was that one.

He says now.

You are already the thing you have been preparing to be, and the word at the front of that sentence settles it. 1 Corinthians 12:27 says now ye are the body of Christ in the present tense to a congregation with visible problems, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named all through that chapter as the one who does the placing, which means the room with ten people in it tonight is not a preparation for a church.

What the rehearsal has actually cost

Now the nine years, and let us be exact, because there is a cost here and it is not the one anybody would guess.

The cost is not that the group stayed small. That may or may not be true and it is not the point.

The cost is that a man has stood in a room for nine years and never been in it.

Every prayer, every meal, every difficult Thursday, every one of those has happened in a real room with real people in it, and he has attended all of them from about four seconds in the future.

You have been absent from nine years of something real, and the absence was not indifference, it was hope pointed at the wrong room. Psalm 118:24 says this is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it, and it puts the rejoicing in this day rather than in a better one, and it is the same Spirit who is given as the earnest rather than as the whole inheritance, which means the present room was always the one being handed to you.

Wanting more is not the fault

Let us be careful, because there is a wrong lesson here and it would be cruel.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a space, or help, or more people. Those are good desires and some of them are prayers, and nothing on this page says that wanting them is worldly.

Nobody is saying a bigger room would be worse. Nobody is saying growth is a temptation. Some of the best rooms anybody has ever been in are enormous, and that is not this article's business.

You are permitted to want more and to be fully present in what you have, and Scripture never sets those against each other. Philippians 4:11 says I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content, and it is written by somebody actively planning journeys and asking for help in the same letter, and it is the same Spirit who works that contentment, which means the wanting and the being present were never alternatives.