God’s House – Facility Use will grow into a larger study of God’s church. 2024 has seen a number of changes for our church and church building. For now I offered this class to answer a few questions from the congregation and the community.
To start I think it’s important to keep in perspective the importance of a church building. While not useless, our God does not need a church building as if he lived in it. In Acts 17 the Apostle Paul reminds the pagans of Athens that God doesn’t live in a temple built by human hands. When speaking with the woman at the well, Jesus tells her that the time is coming, and has now come, when people won’t go to Jerusalem to worship. We worship our God in Spirit and in truth.
Finally, not once, but twice – at the beginning and the end of his public ministry – Jesus walks into the temple area and starts flipping over tables. He says, in John 2, “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” This should rightly give pause to us as we look at what activities we allow in our churches. Does this mean we can no longer sell T-shirts with the church logos? What about asking parishioners to purchase books for a study? Not to mention the annual rummage sale. Finally money exchanges hands when an offering is given each Sunday, is it not?
The problem with the “market” in the temple during Jesus’ ministry was that the Jews were monetizing the worship life of God’s people. A family shows up during the Passover, instead of receiving the family and their lamb offering, the priest would reject the offering and point them to the market. You want to give an offering?! Great, you need to exchange your shekels into TempleBucks. It’s your lucky day because the exchange rate is strong for Passover! You’re actually going to give your God more when you give in TempleBucks. This is despicable. Jesus was right to start flipping over tables.
Two of main changes that have happened in 2024 are the expansion of the Food Pantry through Second Harvest and the use of a service called SpaceTogether. Second Harvest is a food shelf that serves Winston Salem and other communities. Through their resources we have been able to serve many more people with our Food Bank each Sunday. SpaceTogether is the AirBnB of church rentals. The service has been endorsed by our church body. The goal is to get more foot traffic in our building and service the community through facility use. Currently a community member is offering music lessons in our church. Both of these are wonderful God pleasing uses of our church.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s study God’s House – Facility Use.
Please click HERE for the Bible class slides.