We've bought and sold a few properties over our twenty-seven years of marriage as we've moved from city to city and nation to nation. A couple were smaller apartments or condos that came turnkey. The term turnkey is realtor speak for brand new or move-in ready. No restoration or repairs needed. Simply turn the key and start living.
Two of the properties though, were serious fixer-uppers, larger homes that needed plenty of work. They both had good bones, as they say, with great potential when viewed through a restorer's lens. We never had the money to get them to move-in ready condition up front, so we just got the keys and moved in, ready or not.
My wife and I watch Chip and Joanna Gaines shows just shaking our heads with envy, wishing we'd had some experts like them to get our fixer-uppers turn-key before we'd moved into them. What a rush it must be to have that before banner rolled back and see the immediate after result of their craftsmanship? But our aim was always to gradually restore the homes to their former glory and even improve on the originals, in order to enhance their beauty and value.
Our experience has become a powerful church metaphor for us.
In our experience, God's house never comes turnkey.
It's move-in ready or not.
It's a fixer-upper's dream with no Chip and Joanna Gaines in sight. You're living on a perpetual building site. It's messy and uncomfortable. But the progress is beautiful and the end product satisfying because God keeps restoring His house.
The Bible describes God's people as living stones in His house. "You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:5) This infers that God is always doing renovation projects on his house and that he moves His people around as living stones in order that His Spirit may indwell His spiritual house. This requires a sacrifice on our part, because each of us has been saved and set apart as priests by Jesus' to serve in His house. Mixed metaphors by the Apostle Peter, perhaps, but suffice to say that living stones have to be flexible and priests have to be sacrificial. I think that's Peter's point here.
When we remodeled the kitchen in our current house we had to move our fridge and microwave into our dining room for three months. It felt horribly confined but so worth it in the end. Sometimes God will close down a part of his house and have us squeeze together in a more confined space while that room is being restored. People who expect their church to be turn-key tend to get disgruntled when God decides to do some remodeling and move the walls and the furniture around. But if we co-operate with our Great Architect we get too see His house more glorious than it was before.
Every metaphor has its limits, of course, but this is one way to understand what is happening at present in the part of God's house called Southlands. While God graciously enabled us to extend a wing during Covid through the planting Southlands Santa Ana in January, our Whittier congregation endured numerous setbacks over the Covid season. These included more stringent limits on in-person gathering, the loss of their Sunday morning venue, the obvious challenges of online church as well as numerous key members leaving the LA area. They remain a healthy and faithful community, but we have felt that they have needed both strengthening and a viable morning venue in order to be effective in their mission.
So, last Sunday we welcomed Southlands Whittier back to Brea for a season of refreshing and what we hope will be a relaunch in the Fall or early 2022. In the meantime, Kevin and Shannon begin a 10 week sabbatical to rest and recalibrate after 6 years of faithful leadership. The congregation will continue doing small groups and outreach in Whittier and will also gather to worship in Uptown Whittier on the third Sunday of each month at 5pm at Disciple Church. However, on Sunday mornings they will join with us at Brea. Let's make sure they feel like we are a home away from home for them. We also want to encourage people from other Southlands congregations to come out and bolster their monthly evening gatherings with faith and presence.
In the mean time, we stand with so many churches around the world who have felt confined, displaced and discouraged in this season. God promised that He would restore His house not just to former glory, but to greater glory.
"The glory of the latter house will be greater than the glory of the former house." (Haggai 2:9)
This promises is an anchor for our soul as we stand amidst the rubble of God's restoration project.
Because God's house never comes turnkey.
