Too Cool for Church?

These days there are churches that don’t want to include the word “church” in their name. It’s not cool? It’s too constraining? These days there are other places that have church on the sign out front but who really shouldn’t be recognized as one. We are Trinity Evangel Church, and we like it.

Church isn’t the name of a mascot, it’s the name of a single group with many members. We are not “Trinity Evangel Christians,” though that is true in one way, we are part of one body. We are Christians, yes, and we are saved by faith one-by-one, but we are also saved by faith into-one. There is one Lord, one faith, one hope, one body.

This is a spiritual and supernatural reality, a work of God and His grace that can’t be stopped. Christ is building His church “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). He is making known His “manifold wisdom” in the church throughout the universe (Ephesians 3:10). And also, it is a physical and relationship experience, a work of God and His grace that involves names and faces, times and places, bread and wine.

For a local church, the time around the Lord’s Table embodies, encourages, and exemplifies our one-ness. We share communion. We share duties, we share blessings and burdens, we share in the work and the hope of the harvest. We share salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, we share in His love to us and in His love through us to others and to us from others.

Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us (John 14:2-3), and He is also preparing His bride, the church, for Himself (Ephesians 5:27).