"Forget the church, follow Jesus"

I've been reading a lot lately. Lots of Christian books. My latest reads include
Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Sterns
The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne.

I have been really encouraged by these books. They are great books that I think get at the heart of a lot of what I think it really means to be a christian and live like Jesus. They are convicting as anything and make me want to sell my possessions and live on the streets. Seriously, I had thoughts of raising money to buy a house to start a ministry in the poorest neighborhoods of St. Paul or Minneapolis. I almost emailed my pastor to ask for the money, it was radical. I still really want to do this, but I will wait until the time is right. But these stories, these books, have reminded me how hard it is to truly be christian. How scared I am to really follow Jesus. But I think something is changing. I even read a recent artilce in Newsweek, the cover story actually, titled "Forget the Church, Follow Jesus", by Andrew Sullivan You can read it by clicking here. Yes, indeed people are waking up. I am not alone in claiming back Christianity in the name of Jesus, not the 'church'.

But what about the church? Can I say something obvious? The church is not a building. It is the individuals who follow Jesus. I love this quote,

"Christ has no hands on earth but yours,

no heart but yours, no feet but yours. 

Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out,

the feet for which he is to go about doing good"

So don't be too quick to forget about the Church, your body is the Church. You can decide not to go to church (little c, the building church), but the real Church (capitol C), is you, it's me. It's our bodies, our hands, our feet, our eyes, by which Christ continues to live, if we choose to let him live through us.