A Staging Area

A church building is a staging area, designed for God’s people to use in fulfilling the mission. The mission is the evangelization of the world—for the universal church—and the evangelization of our locale, for the local church. As a staging area, we have to be able to see past it. Marshaling and assembling the troops is not the same thing as sending them out to battle.

This means that if we build our building, and within a year or so it is not big enough to contain us all, that is not a sign of poor planning. It is a sign to us that we are beginning to accomplish the mission. Our goal should not be to have a sanctuary big enough to hold us all, so that we might then settle into our long, slow glide plane into cultural irrelevance.

Moscow is a small town, but we nevertheless want our great-grandchildren to have a choice of ten solid Reformed churches, each with their own building. Not only that, but because we are postmillennialists, we would like to see those Reformed churches not at war with each other.

The Great Commission was to disciple the nations, and so our marching orders here on the Palouse is to disciple the Palouse. Church growth must not be thought of as a zero sum game, where one church can only grow at the expense of the others. No, not at all. Christians churches are built out of former non-Christians. Our task is evangelism and discipleship. Our task is birth and growth. Our task is to see our region of the country fill up with the knowledge of God.

Church buildings are a tool that can help us do that. They can also be a distraction, where possession of the tool becomes the thing instead of using the tool. We should not be like the children of Israel who invaded the land of Canaan with sufficient force to remain there themselves, but not sufficient force to displace them . . . and their idols.

So let the stones cry out.