I was in conversation with a friend recently and, in passing, she said of me “You’ve left the church”, and I was taken aback & immediately said to myself “No I haven’t”,
But quickly responded “But I can see why she might think that. I rarely attend worship in church, I’ve returned my ‘Permission to Officiate’ to the Bishop so I am no longer authorised to lead worship in church, and I’ve gone ‘feral’. But I still don’t think that I’ve “left the church”. So why not?
The answer is that my Christian journey has led me into a much bigger vision of what ‘church’ is. Some years ago my friend Roy Gregory and I edited a book entitled ‘The God you already know’ based on the premise that we all have some experience of God. Today I’d entitle it, ‘The God whom every created thing knows’.
For on the one hand I have been led to understand that every human comes from God at their birth, is born to incarnate something of the God they already know when they express divine attributes like, love, kindness, compassion, hospitality, creativity etc, and in doing so become whom they are created to be, before returning to God at their death.
And on the other that God is present in all of creation, and every created thing gives worship and glory to God simply by being, worship in which we join when we are whom God has created us to be.
In this sense “God’s Church” is everywhere all the time and includes everything. It isn’t somewhere I can choose to go to or to leave, it’s always where I am.
Amen!