{"id":4877,"date":"2022-07-18T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=4877"},"modified":"2022-07-09T19:19:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T01:19:11","slug":"the-church-in-your-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=4877","title":{"rendered":"The church in your house"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=4873\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Yesterday<\/a> we talked about the main message of Paul\u2019s letter to Philemon: \u201cCharge it to my account.\u201d Today, I want to talk about the very first sentence of the letter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,&nbsp;to Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house&#8230; (Philemon, verses 1 and 2, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a simple sentence: \u201cto\u2026the church in your house.\u201d The church isn\u2019t the building, it\u2019s the people. In this case, a group of people meets in Archippus\u2019 house. It\u2019s a simple sentence but a huge paradigm shift for most North American Christians. \u201cChurch\u201d is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Not the building<\/li><li>Not the 11am Sunday service (as opposed to Sunday School)<\/li><li>Not the denomination you\u2019re affiliated with (\u201cThe Roman Catholic Church\u201d or \u201cThe Presbyterian Church\u201d or \u201cBaptist Church\u201d (of whatever flavor)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s THE PEOPLE, either local or worldwide for all time. As the tee-shirt says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"408\" height=\"89\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png?resize=408%2C89&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4878\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png?w=408&amp;ssl=1 408w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png?resize=300%2C65&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 408px) 100vw, 408px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-2.png\"><\/a>That&#8217;s not even quite right. We are the church, like it or not. And we&#8217;re called to be &#8220;the called out ones&#8221; especially when we&#8217;re <strong><em>not <\/em><\/strong>in the building! I <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1823\" target=\"_blank\">wrote about this back in 2020<\/a> after hearing Todd Wagner, then pastor of Watermark Church in Dallas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>If we&nbsp;primarily define church as a building, we miss the point of what God intended His Church to be:&nbsp;<strong>a group of people that are on mission 24\/7 to bring hope and restoration to a broken world<\/strong>. This could not be more important. We\u2019ve let culture define what the church is, causing people to first think of walls and windows instead of men and women who love and care for them.<\/em> &#8211; Todd Wagner, February 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus was clear &#8211; I&#8217;m not building a building, I&#8217;m calling out people who will successfully storm the gates of hell:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16.18, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we talked about the main message of Paul\u2019s letter to Philemon: \u201cCharge it to my account.\u201d Today, I want to talk about the very first sentence of the letter: Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,&nbsp;to Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=4877\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The church in your house<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1gF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4879,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877\/revisions\/4879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}