Ring, ring…“Hello? What? NO!” It was extremely early on Sunday, July 25, 2004. Mom pulled herself out of bed. She knew nothing good could result from such an early call. The sun had not come up yet, and everything was still. “Are you sure? I don’t believe it.” Tears fell. “We have to call the Popes…We have to call the Weavers… We have to call the Burkes. This is awful.” Phone lines buzzed, and more tears fell. We turned on the TV. It had made local news. My church’s building had been set on fire by an arsonist. That night, the entire sanctuary had burned to the ground.
For the next three and a half years, the people of Castleview Baptist Church assembled in a gymnasium. Even without our beautiful sanctuary, we all still were there, hungering for the truth; and just as many people came as had before the fire. Why did we come? We came, not for the building, but for the prayer, encouragement and the chance to worship God as a body of believers. Through this experience, I learned the church is not the building, it’s the people.
Before the fire, the people in my church tended to have their favorite seat in the pews. They always had the same view of the pastor, from the same distance, with the same people, every week. When we had to make the transition from our sanctuary into the gymnasium that first Sunday morning, the people of our church were usurped. At first, the new seating arrangement was out of our comfort zone, but after we started meeting new people, we realized the church isn’t just about the building, or the pew you sit in, but the people.
Fast forward four years to my junior year. It was the middle of fall, and I woke up late that morning. I got up and had to get ready quickly for my doctor’s appointment that day. I skipped breakfast that morning. That was nothing out of the ordinary. I skip breakfast all the time so I can sleep late. Well, I went to the doctor’s appointment with my family. We were there to get flu shots. There are seven children in my family, so when one of us gets sick we all get sick; so getting flu shots has become an annual ritual at my house. I hopped up onto the doctor’s table, ready as usual. I’d had many shots before, no problem. I don’t know if it was because the flu shot was bad, because it hit a nerve in my arm, or because I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning (the doctors never did figure it out), I passed out, falling head-first to the floor. When I came to, I had a broken tooth, an exposed nerve and a major concussion. There was no question; I was not going to be able to go on my youth group’s retreat that weekend. I knew I was too weak to go, but I was still very disappointed. When this happened, I learned about how the prayer for and encouragement of each other is an important part of the church.
One way I was encouraged was through a close friend of mine. When he found out I was not going to be able to go on the retreat, he made the decision that it was more important for him to stay and keep me company than to go on the retreat. For the next few days, we sat and watched movies and old TV show reruns. We didn’t have nearly as much fun as we would have with the rest of the group, but the thoughtfulness of his presence was particularly encouraging to me.
Another way I was encouraged was through the prayers of my peers. Over the last few years, my youth group has been learning a lot about prayer. Not only have we been learning about it, but we’ve been putting it into practice, which has been astounding. I’ve really enjoyed seeing my youth group grow through corporate prayer. Not only does it bring us closer together, it also brings us closer to God. After my concussion, things were switched up a little bit. Instead of being part of the group that was praying together, I was able to see the work of this their prayer from the receiving end. When my friends returned from the retreat, they said that though I was not there with them physically, I was there with them in spirit. They had used what we had just been learning about prayer, and before every preaching session, they took a few minutes to pray for me together. When I heard this, it made me cry. Not only was I strengthened by their prayer, but I was also tremendously encouraged by their testimony of prayer. Even people I didn’t know well came up to me afterward and said they had been praying for me.
It never ceases to amaze me how different churches around the world meet in so many different places to worship God. I have been privileged to be able to see and hear about such churches through missions trips and through hosting several missionaries in my home. My first missions trip was to a camp in Tõalmãs, Hungary. There was a plain, one-room church in the town where we stayed. On Sunday morning, my missions team got up and went to church. We had an interpreter, but he wasn’t always very easy to hear. Even though there was, for the most part, a language barrier, the experience was overwhelming. We may not have been able to all speak the same language, but we could all worship God together. This experience was not made special because of the building, but because of the people.
That same summer, I was able to visit a missionary friend in Sofia, Bulgaria. Having been a Communist country until just a few years ago, Bulgaria is still a very dark country; but there is freedom of religion. My friend Martin, who is a native of Bulgaria, showed me his small church. As I walked by it, I noticed it was probably the smallest building on the street and the oldest. Okay…you really couldn’t even call it a building. It was a shack. It was falling apart. It was a mess; but Martin was proud of it because it was his church, where he and other local Christians gathered to worship. The building didn’t matter, the people did.
These aren’t the only examples of what we as Americans might think of as odd places to hold church. Just last week, I was speaking to a woman who is an interpreter from Kosova for Samaritan’s Purse. Her church recently had run low on funds and no longer could afford to pay rent for the building where they’d been meeting. Now they continue to meet every week in her home. Another example is a more personal one. My dad was born a missionary kid in South Africa. I’ve grown up with stories about his adventures there. To this day, he remembers how his parents would hold church meetings outside under a huge tree.
Ring, ring… “Hello? Yes, I heard! Can you believe it? I’m so excited!” This time, the phone call was not about a charred, skeleton of a sanctuary. It was about the dedication of a beautiful new one. After three and a half years of collapsible stages, hard folding chairs, and basketball nets, Castleview Baptist Church was finally moving into its new sanctuary. It was surely an exciting time for all, but God used the fire to teach us all a very important lesson: The church is not the building, it’s the people.
