What time is church?
The best answer is, “Now.”
When we first started meeting for worship in The Moment, we took up an offering. Instead of passing a plate, we asked people to come forward. The physical movement was to help take us out of the spectator role of an audience and into the place of participants. It also served as an example of what we are called to do as followers of Jesus, step out into the world.
While getting up and coming forward to give an offering is the norm in some traditions, it was not in ours. Whether in a sanctuary or a bar, whether the person was six or sixty, if called to come forward for the offering, everyone would look around and wait for one thing to happen before they would move. Someone had to go first. In a crowd of five or five hundred, if something new is started, people will look for someone to go first before they move. For our offerings, usually a mother would push her child into the aisle. As soon as the child would venture out, then everyone would follow. It always took the one.
Followers of Jesus are called to be the one, to step first, to cross the distances that separate us, to try the miraculous, to sing the song that needs to be sung or speak the words that
need to be spoken. We stopped taking a collection at The Moment because we wanted to change the message. Better than, “Give to The Moment,” or “We need your offerings,” we reminded each other, “Our lives are our offerings. We each have parts to play in God’s story and the story is happening now.” If church is over when worship ends, then we leave and blend back into our crowds where no one is the one, no one is called out, where we all wait for someone to go 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th…. However, if church begins when worship finishes, if church is our way in the world, then one life, one moment, one encounter, one miracle at a time, the world will change. When God’s people step out person by person with Jesus’ life as our way in the world, then the world will be transformed. The kingdom of God will become a reality. Jesus never asked for 10% but 100%, or as my coaches used to say, “I want 110%!”
At some point in Jerusalem, Peter wakes to his unconscious life in committee and steps back out in the world. He remembers being with Jesus in his younger days and how more than anything he wanted to be with Jesus regardless of the risk.
In Matthew 14, Jesus sent the disciples out into a storm then came walking to them on water. The disciples, Peter included, all wanted to be with Jesus. The
difference between Peter and the other eleven was simple, while they wanted to be with Jesus in their sanctuary, their safe place, their boat, Peter wanted to be with Jesus in that moment, even in the storm, even if it took a miracle to get to him. Foolish? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Risky? Of course. Did he fail? Yes. Did he fall? Yes. But his goal was to be with Jesus in every moment, in the craft or on the surf, in the boat or in the storm, wherever Jesus was, that’s where he wanted to be.
When Jesus and Peter got into the boat, the other disciples proclaimed, “Truly you are the Son of God,” they believed. Peter trusted. They had the creed. Peter had faith.
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