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I enjoy the comments and questions by email I sometimes get from visitors of this site. They let me know somebody's actually looking. One emailer from Virginia questioned my use of the word "facility" instead of "church" in the blog sub-title. She thought it sounded too much like we're merely building an office, or a plant of some sort. Actually, I chose to use the word "facility" very deliberately because the building that will go up on Crabtree Road is not a church.Woodland Baptist Church is an assembly of people, not to be confused with the building we inhabit at any given time. The New Testament never uses the Greek word ekklesia to describe a building, but rather, a called out assembly of people. Am I just splitting hairs over semantics? I don't think so. Would you refer to the house that you live in as your family? Of course not. Wouldn't you think it strange if a friend with a new home invited you to "come see the new family we built in Canton?" Of course you would. Your house is merely the building where your family resides, not the family itself. Just as only people can comprise a family, only redeemed people can comprise a church.
Of course, people will continue to refer to the building we meet in as "the church". That's just common usage of the term, and it probably will never change. However, I think it's important that we not allow ourselves to be so identified with a particular building that it becomes what we think of when we say "Woodland Baptist Church". People should come to mind first. We'll all be proud of our new facility when it's completed, and rightfully so. We're all working hard to make it happen. But this new building could be destroyed by a fire or a storm in a matter of minutes. Not so the church. This new building may one day face the wrecking ball to make room for another building. The church of Jesus Christ will stand forever; He said the gates of hell will not prevail against it. No building can make that claim. Only the church, "the called out assembly" that Jesus has built, will last forever. Only Jesus can build a church.
