Building the Body into a Temple
By Lenn Zeller, Director of Conference Care
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19–22)
Some years ago, as I spoke with the children in worship, I tried to explain that the church is not a building but a group of people who trust, believe and seek to serve Christ. As I shared what I thought was a simple and obvious children’s object lesson, one little girl sat there with her arms crossed and her head shaking over and over, “No! No! No!” She insisted that the church is a building, and everyone knows that! I could not convince her otherwise. She returned to her parents in the pew still shaking her head.
The apostle Paul, in the passage above, does describe the church of Jesus Christ as a building, but only in a metaphorical way. In reality, in spite of that little girl’s insistence (she’s now a young woman), God’s house is not a building but a people. He lives in us and in all who believe and shows His love through us. “People can see that God is love and that Christ is Lord as we live in harmony with each other and in accordance with what God says in His Word.” (Life Application Study Bible, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL. Footnote, p. 2134)
By God’s grace, through Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and by our faith in Him, we are now members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. And we are being built together. Notice the verb tense there! We are being built, as a continuing, ongoing action. The church, the body of Christ, is not a finished, accomplished fact yet. God is still working, still building, still molding His church. It is still growing and expanding, still being transformed and shaped into the building that God desires it to be.
Therefore, we must realize that our congregations, even the best of them, are not yet finished. God is still working on our fellowship, shaping our ministries, building up our unity and mutual love, expanding our witness and service to our community. We still have much work to do to become people who reflect our Savior and congregations that honor Him.
And He is calling us to continue to reach into our communities with the Gospel. God has chosen the church as the main means by which He presents the Gospel to the lost and calls them to saving faith. We do that through the evangelistic ministries of the church, through one-on-one connections church members make with their neighbors, and through serving the real needs of the community. And we do that through healthy churches planting new churches which reach the lost in ways that older, established churches often cannot.
The Conference priorities of Church Multiplication, Church Development and Conference Care are deeply intertwined, and overlap on many levels. As we work for healing in conflicted situations, it frees the church to further develop their own ministries and even look to church planting. Planting a new church can strengthen a local church and unite them around an exciting vision, providing great strength and enthusiasm in that local church. All of which will build the body of Christ “to become a holy temple in the Lord.”
