IDENTIY & PERCEPTION

I grew up in sight of a number of mountains like Mt. Adams and hills pictured to the left.  That was my perception of what hills and mountains looked like.
We had a ministry in northern California, and where we lived the land was flat. They flood-irrigated the field crops. In a discussion about a land location, one local said it was over by the mountain.  
Noticing my questioning look, he quickly added, "You know the hill."    
"Hill?  What hill?  There isn't a hill within 20 miles"
He pointed out a little rise in the land where water would probably run down. We had a good laugh over that after I explained my perception of a hill.
WHAT IS OUR PERCEPTION OF "CHURCH"?
Who does not say, "I'm going to church"? We call the place where we worship, the church. And when we say we are "building a church," we mean we are constructing a facility, not that we are building men and women in spiritual maturity. In a thousand com­mon expressions we refer to the church as a place.
Chuck Colson writes:

  "No perception is more firmly rooted in our culture than that the church is a building-a view held by both churched and unchurched.

We have trouble even defining what the church is. Is it a local congregation or a denomination? Is it all Christians worldwide or just those who are on membership rolls? What about those who watch services on television, those who are baptized as infants, those who have never been baptized?

Normally Christians "will fight valiantly to protect not only the orderly pattern of their lives, but also their property. In protecting their building and property, they be­lieved they were protecting their church. They were one and the same.      

This is no harmless colloquialism. It both presupposes and conditions our view of the chuch, creating what some have aptly called the "edifice complex," wherein the importance is directly measured by the size and grandeur of the structure itself.
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OIKOS KOINONIA