Are you ‘church’ alone, in ZOOM reality, a building & does it even matter?

What’s a “church” & does it even matter?

The minister of Trinity Covenant in Aptos, CA  typically discusses books which he has read  and today was no exception.

The book mentioned  today   is Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. A best seller  on Amazon — for $10.21 in paperback and $12.99 on electronic Kindle –  Into the Wild is  about a young man who gives  up everything he owns, lives a life of non-attachment and four months later he poisons himself and  then starves to death in Alaska. His body was found.  He had  kept a journal.   One of his last journal entries was  “Happiness is only real when shared.”   

Christopher McCandless, the young man who sought non-attachment and died on the slopes of Alaska,    realized  belatedly that sharing and happiness are intertwined.

So is a church about sharing? Yes.   Christians know that Communion / aka Mass  is sharing bread and wine as the body of Christ.  And there’s  other kinds of sharing –  the word of God, sharing prayers for others and sharing  lots of smiles and also   tears.

A   bit of what people heard in the sermon:    “Spirit is the word for wind…..”   “Fire comes down when God makes a new place of worship…. “  “God pours Himself in with baptism….”

Take away what a church is?    An  attempt:   A church is a  gathering of Christians in physical space  (not ZOOM virtual reality)  which is at the same time  both a  specific   and  a  catholic  gathering    Analogy:    Think of light — which is both a wave and a particle.   Likewise a church is both a  particular physical gathering  and not a not  particular world wide gathering.

So, what’s your attempt to define “church”?

What is shared in the picture taken at Trinity Covenant on Pentacost Sunday, May 31, 2020?    The minister,Troy Martin,  invites with the words “Come together to eat” 1 Corinthians 11:33.  Together in one place people share.

Interested?  Want to share?   The Trinity Covenant  service  is at 10:00 am on Sundays at physical location of  1040 Bonita Drive, Aptos, CA.    The building is  just off highway #1 near the Seascape exit.

You can also tune in on ZOOM.    Go for the real thing, I say.

There’s heaps of  well  behaved kids.  Amazing kids!  Just a little  popery!   

written by Cameron Jackson   drcameronjackson@gmail.com