Cybercolumn By John Duncan: The church

Posted: 10/16/06

CYBER COLUMN:
The church

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, reflecting on the church. A picture of a church building hangs on the wall in my office. The white wooden church reminds me of the simplicity of the past, the joy of the present, the hope of the future and God’s own peculiar people.

The church is the ecclesia, Greek for the people “called out,” or a Roman way of saying that the church is an association of people and obligations and reciprocal, circular response of love to the cross and to Jesus and to each other. The church is the bride of Christ, people making preparations for the walk down the aisle and the cake and the flowers and the celebratory joy of a white wedding dress and birdseed scattered in a euphoric moment of hysteria. The church is a fellowship of the spirit, koinonia, which means that the church is a place where people share, care and bear one another’s burdens.

The church is a kingdom of priests, which means the church is a free-spirit kind of place and a free-thinking kind of place, where people can pray, discuss, interpret the Bible on their own, and believe in Jesus with purpose and passion. The church is the body of Christ, which, of course, means every little hangnail and stumped toe and elbow and heart and capillary and eyeball in the church is important, because the church cost Jesus an arm and a leg on the cross, and he is the head, but by God’s grace, it all fits together like puzzles put together on fold-out tables. I have found that Jesus’ body, the church, is not always healthy and does not always look the greatest and sometimes it feels bad about itself, and other times it shines like a guy with a good tan but, regardless, it is still the part and parts that Jesus works with and loves and uses for his glory and weeps over and laughs over and even smiles, and angels rejoice when one lost sinner enters the fold. The church, after all, is quite an organism and a place and a people and God’s very own.

I have been in large and small churches, witnessed Christ’s body running and limping and have seen the church on glowing days of good report and sad days of deep depression, and yet still the church is God’s very own. St. Peter calls the church God’s peculiar people. I find myself emphasizing “peculiar.”

I am back to that picture on the wall. The church served as my first pastorate. Twelve people attended very Sunday, and 28 came one Sunday when the Boy Scouts showed up on a weekend campout. I was in high cotton on that Sunday. Everybody loves a good report. There were the Taylors and the Campbells and the Parks, especially Emma, who played the piano every dear old Sunday while I led the singing. She loved to play Make Me a Channel of Blessing. She was a blessing along with the other folk who gathered on Sunday and made up that rural church near the Colorado River in Central Texas.

We had no air conditioning in that church, but the open windows with screens sufficed. I almost blew the church up one winter Sunday when it was about 23 degrees Fahrenheit and the ice-cold wind whistled through that rickety wooden building. I knelt on my knees, found where to turn on the gas, turned the knob, lazily struck a match and POOF! In one anxious moment, I singed my eyebrows, felt the pulse of my heart in my throat and gut and everywhere else and praised the Lord for life and breath and learned a lesson never forgotten: Do not delay (when lighting a gas stove)! I grew up and the city, and a thermostat on the wall suddenly made much better sense to me than a gas stove. That moment gave me a rush like space shuttle astronauts must get when NASA’s mission control fires rocket boosters ready for lift off!

I guess you could say this city boy learned so much in that church. I learned the difference between sheep and goats because one day Merle Taylor was weaning baby goats and, looking for a dignified thing to say, I said, “Mr. Taylor, I like you’re sheep.” He chuckled and said, “Preacher, them’s goats.” I learned that sometimes the dignified thing is to say nothing at all, because it’s better to leave your foolishness in your heart than to spill it through your lips. I learned that goats can look like sheep. I learned that weaning can be a painful process.

I learned about people: Emma Parks made the best pecan pie, and the Taylors were peanut farmers, and harvest season was important, and the land was important to God, and that not everybody agreed on everything even with only 12 people, and not to take everything personal, because peculiar people say stuff and, well, attend church as God’s peculiar people and that we’re all peculiar, and church people want to know the prayer list, and then, like now, we prayed for people with cancer and the lost and missions and the church and grandkids and the harvest and God’s work and broken legs, broken water pipes and broken hearts. I learned about life, because Merle Taylor once said this about farming, “Sometimes you sit here on the porch after the seeds have been planted and watch the crops grow, and sometimes they grow, and sometimes there is no rain or the grasshoppers ruin the crop, and sometimes it is a bumper crop, and sometimes it’s bust. All you can do is learn to trust the Lord.” I learned in church and at church you have to learn to trust the Lord.

I learned that people are peculiar and that prayer works and Jesus saves and pecan pie breaks down barriers at kitchen tables and that when you love Jesus and Jesus loves you and people love each other, that God’s peculiar people become, well, as peculiar as your family history or the cast of characters that show up at your family reunion or about as peculiar as the relatives you did not know you had who show up at a church hosted meal after a funeral for a relative. Oh the stories! Oh the people! Oh the memories! God loves his peculiar people.

That church on the wall has concrete cinder blocks that hold it up. Christ holds it up, too. An outhouse stands nearby. A green-metal roof covers the church. Rain pounded that roof. I can hear the creaking of boards, smell the wooden benches, see the hand-made pulpit, and step away from the gas stove as I picture the church in my mind. I look out the screened window and see trees, the cows swishing their tails, rows of peanuts, a harvesting tractor, and bluebonnets painted on a canvas of green cascading up the rolling hills. I can see people listening, hear one snoring out loud, hear the buzzing of bees while I preached in the spring, see the black dog that walked the aisle one Sunday, and feel the POOF of fire electrifying my eyebrows. I figure, we’re all peculiar people, a people after God’s own heart, the people whom God loves.

I love the church. It has been 20, almost 25, years since I pastored that white-wooden church with an outhouse and buzzing bees and gas fire in the winter and peanut farmers and those wonderful, peculiar people. Then, as now, I am still taking Merle Taylor’s advice, planting seeds, watching the harvest and learning to trust the Lord. I thank the Lord for his peculiar people, there and here and everywhere. I am reflecting, remembering, and sure wishing for a piece of Emma’s pecan pie!

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines. You can respond to his column by e-mailing him at jduncan@lakesidebc.org.