Quiz - is your church about people or a building

The church is the people, not the building. (T/F)

Of course, this statement is true. I imagine that nearly everyone who reads this will agree. Indeed, this idea is preached from the pulpit in nearly all fundie and conservative gelly churches. I dare say that you would have to look hard to find anyone who disagrees with this statement. Well, we say this is true, but is it really practiced?

I want to propose a short and simple quiz that should be useful for some self-examination. Carefully consider the following questions.

1) If someone sat in your church service every Sunday and participated in several activities, but otherwise interacted with people only occasionally and never in any spiritually meaningful way, would they be considered an unfaithful member?

2) If someone came to a Sunday service only occasionally and participated in little/no programs, but was actively and consistently involved in the spiritual life of the people and regularly met with them outside the church services, would they be considered an integral part of the church?

3) If you answered 'no' to either question, please explain how you reconcile this with your claim that the church is the people, not the building.

I'm sorry, but if you had to answer 'no' to question 1 or 2, you failed the quiz. Number 3 is a trick question, these things can't be reconciled. What did you learn? The first step toward fixing a problem is recognizing that it exists. In practice, most churches value faithfulness to programs over faithfulness to people, even though they claim otherwise. If this describes your church, try to make others aware of the problem and attempt to fix it. If this fails, consider learning about Biblical house churches and starting one.