Hebrews 3:1-6
I do not care what you call it, a building is not God’s house. The first six verses of chapter three make clear that God’s people are God’s house. God’s spirit lives within us, and not within some building. God’s spirit does not live in a church building that is empty 95% of the time. As Christians, we have not always clearly understood that. I can still remember my grandmother telling me as a child not to run in God’s house. She was right that children should not run indoors; it is not safe and it is not polite. She was wrong about the building being God’s house. When I was young, for a short time our local congregation used an elementary school cafeteria as a sanctuary. Our congregation meeting in a cafeteria was no less God’s house than a congregation meeting in a giant cathedral was.

In the mid-1980s, a large church in a large city was going to build a new sanctuary. They had budgeted five million dollars for the building; this was when $1,000,000 was still a lot of money. The building committee split into two different groups. They did not split on purpose; they split over their desires for what the new building should consist of. One group insisted that the new building must have the tallest steeple in the city, and must have a large ornate stained glass window. First Church was the first congregation of their denomination to form a church in that city. Over the years, the city had changed and their property was now in the inner city. The second group insisted that the new building must include facilities to minister to the poor who lived in the housing projects surrounding them. There were some serious discussions, and they finally settled on a compromise where both sides got much of what they wanted. I cannot help but wonder how much of what they got was what God wanted. Man glories in his fancy buildings, but the church glories in God’s love. Being in a church is never a substitute for being the church.