Church.

That word used to bring to mind the smell of musty storage rooms and the thrill of hidden passageways. The church I grew up in met in a very large building that had been remodeled and added on to several times. As the church grew numerically the need for more space increased. This resulted in two large meeting areas, the larger of which could seat almost one thousand people, with the smaller one being all but abandoned except for an occasional kids class. As the years went by, the number of people attending dwindled. As you can imagine, this resulted in all sorts of unused hallways and back stairwells filled with cobwebs and that distinct church basement smell.

As I look back on that time in my life, thinking of church mostly made me think of the building. I distinctly remember discovering a “secret room” inside one of the small storage rooms. The “secret room” was actually a hinged panel which blended in with the rest of the paneling, and it led out onto a flat roof portion that had been covered over by new rafters and a higher roof. It created the perfect spot to store things like an over-abundance of rubber ducks and old tabernacle furniture replicas made out of styrofoam. It channeled all of the Tony-Stark-exploring-the-Hydra-base vibes in Marvel’s Age of Ultron when he whispered “Please be a secret door…please be a secret door…please be a secret door…YAY!”

I remember thinking of church primarily as a place I went to or left from, not as an identity that I carried around with me and lived out everywhere I went. I certainly didn’t understand that my commitment to those people was part of what made us a church. I just thought that we were the church because of what we did, not really because of who God had made us to be in Christ. I didn’t have the framework to see it as any more than the building and the events, and it would be quite some time before the Spirit of God would use the Word of God and my life experience to adjust my lenses to see the beauty and glory of the church flowing from that newfound awareness of the implications of the gospel for all of life.

What if there is a “secret door” into a more rich understanding of the church?
What if that means moving from the typical view of seeing the church as a weekly event through the secret door of everyday church?

Wisdom You Can See

You can’t see wisdom. It’s one of those invisible concepts that is tough to nail down. I think of wisdom as knowledge applied rightly. I don’t know if that’s the actual definition, but that’s the idea that sticks in my head. So we see the fruit of wisdom in right choices, but not wisdom itself. Wisdom shows up in our actions and decisions, but wisdom itself is invisible. When it comes to the church–are you ready for this?–it is God’s wisdom made visible!

Paul writes in Ephesians 3:8-11 (NLT)…

⁸ Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. ⁹ I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning. ¹⁰ God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.

The church displays God’s wisdom for all to see. Even all of the unseen rulers and authorities in heavenly places take note. The wisdom of God actually shows up in the church. And it’s through the secret door of everyday church that we see that wisdom. Of course, it’s not really a secret door. According to Ephesians 3:10, God has revealed it to the entire galaxy. Even the angels eagerly watch these things happen (1 Peter 1:12). That seems anything but secret! I call it a secret door because we need to have spiritual eyes to see it. In fact, we won’t see or understand the beauty of the gospel and what it means for our life until the Spirit of God reveals it to us (1 Corinthians 2:14). And more often than not, even as Christians, we look in the wrong places and miss the beauty.

If your church is anything like mine, it can sometimes feel like we don’t show God’s wisdom very well. We selfishly establish our own little kingdoms and want God to bless them. We can be more known for what we’re against culturally than what we are for biblically. Many times our biggest quarrels are over the songs we sing or what kids curriculum we use. Not that those things aren’t important. What songs we sing and what we teach our kids are profoundly important. But anyone who walks in on a Sunday can see those things, and if we’re not careful, we can begin to define ourselves by things like songs and attach our identity to our programs and liturgies. They can become distractions from what actually sets us apart as the people of God. So how does the wisdom of God show up in the church?

What You Actually See

It’s probably not what we think. In fact, the way God’s wisdom shows up is much more mundane than we might like to admit. The wisdom of God is displayed in the commitment of redeemed sinners to each other, revealing our belief in the gospel, and ultimately God’s grace working in our lives for his glory (Ephesians 1:6). The Bible refers to God’s conversion work in our lives as a spiritual birth. He has caused us to be born again (1 Peter 1:3; John 3:3-8). It is precisely the invisibility of God’s spiritual new-birth work that makes our commitment to each other so important. We can’t see when the new birth happens, but we can see who has confessed belief in the gospel and committed to guard it in our local church. Our commitments to each other in our local church make the invisible work of God visible. We see it. Angels see it. Rulers and authorities in the heavenly places see it. The world around us sees it.

And this happens in the everyday. the Bible’s description of our life together as the church reveals a stark “everydayness.” Here’s the scope…

Love one another with brotherly affection (Rom. 12:10)
Outdo one another in showing honor (Rom. 12:10)
Live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16)
Do not pass judgment on one another in matters of conscience (Rom. 14:13)
Welcome one another (Rom. 15:7)
Wait for one another in the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:33)
Greet one another with a holy kiss (2 Cor. 13:12)
Serve one another (Gal. 5:13)
Do not provoke one another (Gal. 5:26)
Do not envy one another (Gal. 5:26)
Bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)
Bear with one another in love (Eph. 4:2)
Be kind to one another (Eph. 4:32)
Submit to one another (Eph 5:21)
Do not lie to one another (Col. 3:9)
Encourage one another (1 Thess. 4:18)
Build one another up (1 Thess. 5:11)
Consider how to stir up one another to love and good works (Heb. 10:24)
Do not speak evil against one another (James 4:11)
Do not grumble against one another (James 5:9)
Confess your sins to one another (James 5:16)
Pray for one another (James 5:16)
Show hospitality to one another (1 Pet. 4:9)

These are the kinds of things that will characterize our relationships when we believe the gospel. At first glance, this can seem overwhelming. But then a closer look reveals that perhaps Peter’s words in his first letter adequately summarize the shape of our relationships in the everyday church…

⁸ Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8 (NLT)

Most of these things you won’t see in a church service. Sure, you might see evidence of some of these on a Sunday morning, but how deeply can you love someone if you don’t even know their name? If God’s plan is to show the universe his wisdom through the church, then we must give attention to all of our relationships all of the time because it is in these everyday relationships that we actually see the wisdom of God. And it is only in the power of the gospel at work in us that we can live out this kind of reality. Our identity must be grounded in who God is and what he has done for us in Christ.

Once You See

On the surface, it might seem like church is about a 90-minute experience on a Sunday morning with a secret paneled door thrown in every now and then. But if it’s just about those tangible intermittent things, then there wouldn’t be much wisdom there.

Instead, God has made the church to be the people that we commit to gather with regularly and live out the gospel with daily. All of a sudden, church has oozed into all of life. Now we think about school and work and sports and friendships and marriages and kids all as ways to show the wisdom of God to a world that desperately needs the true nature of God that is revealed in our relationships with one another.

Once you go through the secret door from once or twice a week to everyday, every other version of church will seem to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Once you catch this vision of everyday church showing up in your relationships, you’ll never want to go back to musty storage rooms and Sunday morning highs.