Today, Outside the Church Building

found online by Raymond

 
From John Pavlovitz:

Christian,

You may likely find yourself in a church this Sunday. That’s potentially a fine, noble, and beautiful thing. There’s nothing at all wrong with gathering in a building with people on the same journey you’re on and seeking community and inspiration and guidance there. These are in fact, wonderful aspirations. And yet for all that might go on in that building, for all you may feel and hear and experience there—I want you to know that the building is not the point.

What happens in that building is not what matters. You can spend your morning in that building; you can raise your hands skyward and be moved to tears, you can hear words that challenge and encourage and convict you, you can sing until you shake the rafters and goosebumps line your forearms. Week after week you can enter that building and feel passionate and spiritual and committed—and week after week you can leave that building largely the way you came in, changing nothing about the world outside that building. And this, my friend, would be a sin.

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