What is the Church?

These past few weeks I have found myself coming back to The Book of Concord, specifically Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, which teaches us about the church. As Abiding Presence has moved into the unchartered territory of exclusively livestream worship and has had to transition the primary place of our relationship building into virtual platforms, I have kept going back to the basic question, “What is the church?” I have wrestled with what it means to be faithful to the timeless understanding of what the church is in the midst of the current challenges we face.

Article VII begins, “They teach that one holy Church is to continue forever.” The current challenges we are facing are not a threat to the church’s survival. Livestream worship and virtual relational platforms for a season will not be the end of the church. The church will continue forever not because of us, but because of Christ. We may need to get a bit creative at times, but it is Christ who will keep forming us into his body, which is the church.

Article VII then continues, “The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered.” The church needs three things to be the church:
1.     Saints (that’s people like us, even in our least saintly moments)
2.     The Gospel (that’s the Word of God) rightly taught
3.     The Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) rightly administered

As I look at Abiding Presence right now, we’ve got it – saints, gospel and sacraments! I am confident that we are teaching and administering faithfully, to the best of our abilities, given the limits we face in this season. We are the church that is both timeless in its understanding of what it means to be the body of Christ for the sake of the world and creative in its response to the challenges that are before us in this moment.