“Properly speaking, the church is the assembly of saints and true believers.”
Augsburg Confession, article 8
A few days before my family and I arrived at my mother’s home in Viroqua, Wisconsin last month a small white frame country church about five miles northwest of town burned to the ground. Like many others, we drove out to look at the sad scene. Only one steel I-beam remained standing. It apparently had spanned the front double doors. They hoped to retrieve the bell which had fallen into the basement which was filled with charred timbers. The smell of burnt wood filtered into our car even with the windows rolled up. Later the fire marshal attributed the fire to a lighting strike because the National Weather Service recorded four lightening strikes at the exact GPS coordinates for the church two days before. The fire smoldered for two days because no one entered the church on a daily basis, and then broke out into a hot fire that consumed the church before the fire was noticed and the fire department arrived.
And yet the next Sunday the church was still there. Not the building, of course, but the “assembly of saints and true believers.” My mother’s church, which is my old home church, loaned the congregation the P.A. system they use for evening outdoor worship in the summer so that the congregation could gather on the lawn next to the charred remains of the building on a warm Sunday morning to hear the Word and celebrate the Sacrament. I don’t know what has happened since. The congregation will have to think long and hard about whether to build a structure on that site to protect them from the elements as they gather for worship. They are a small and elderly group of Christians. Just like in Kittson County, there are many small rural congregations within a few miles of the church. But on that one Sunday, a few days after the fire, the church was still there.
As Lutheran Christians we subscribe to the Augsburg Confession’s definition of the church. In popular parlance the word “church” is often used to speak of a building which is considered to be a “sacred place.” If it is a “sacred place” what makes it so? It is that the church has gathered in that place to hear the Word of God and to receive the Sacraments. If believers are no longer gathering for the Word and Sacrament in that place, it loses the designation of a sacred place, even though the feel of sanctity may linger for a long time, just as the smell of the fire lingered at the burned church site long after the fire was extinguished.
Article 8 of the Augsburg Confession also has implications for membership in the church. The implication is that members are identified by what they do, namely assembling for the Word and the Sacrament on a weekly basis. When people ask about the membership of a congregation, they often are inquiring about how many people have “signed up” to be a part of the congregation and thus are written on the membership roles, much like some social club. At other times people may inquire as to how many “giving units” a congregation has, much like some secular organization where people purchase a membership. Still other times, people inquire as to how many members a congregation can muster for a work project, as if they were “earning their stripes” as members of the military do. But following Article 8, the congregation would “properly speaking” be defined as those who gathered last Sunday for Word and Sacrament. Add to that number those who wish they could gather but cannot because of a disability or illness.
After defining the church and its membership, Article 8 has as its main thrust that the church also has “hypocrites and evil persons mingled with believers.” On this earth the church is never perfect and never pure. Those who seek to be part of a congregation or denomination that has no faults or quarrels or failings are chasing after the wind. It is only after the Last Judgment that there will be an assembly of saints and true believers that is not mingled with others, and even then those people will be saints and true believers only because of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.
After teaching his disciples how to reconcile a dispute (Matthew 18:15-20) Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” So let’s be the church. Let’s assemble together around the Word and Sacrament
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