Clinkers

.“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”- Romans 3:23

This past weekend, Barb and I went to Tallahassee to celebrate with Tallahassee Biker Church for their ten year anniversary. Due to some unforseen issues, we didn't make the celebration but it brought back some wonderful memories of the beginning of that church and all that went it to getting it up and running. It was a work of God that brought it in to existence and it has been a work of God to keep it going. A staggering 32% of churches fail within the first four years. Another study which analyzed church data from 34 Protestant denominations and groups, found that 4,500 churches closed in 2019, while about 3,000 new congregations were started. That means we are slowly loosing ground with establishing churches meant to meet the needs of God's people.

While we were sitting the other night with some friends they reminded me of several different stories I told when I was teaching as the pastor there. It was there that I got the handle Preach given me by a wonderful friend, Laurie Alexander and there where I learned that the church is not the building, the institution, the denomination or the hymal. It is the people that make up the the body of Christ and it is the people that bring the body of Christ to life.

One story they reminded me about was an illustration that I used in a sermon dated, November 12, 2013, titled Strong Hands. This was the first sermon in the new building after we left the tent at the Harley dealership. How many of you have ever heard of “clinker bricks.” Clinkers are bricks that come out of the kiln a little misshapen, miscolored and deformed due to being heated too close to the heat in the kiln. They have a distinct clinking sound when banged together and usually those bricks are smashed and ground up so the powder can be reused. There is a Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York that decided to use “clinkers’ to build their building. This church, Gates Presbyterian Church used imperfect, rejected bricks to show the world that each person comes deformed and misshapen to the church, but it is Christ who binds them together to make a perfect structure. It is through His grace and mercy that we as the body of Christ become perfectly knit together to reach the world.

We are all clinkers, slightly misshapen by the things that have scarred us in life but remembering that it is Christ who binds us together makes, us, the church, stronger. It is when we fail to remember we are a part of the whole, the church becomes about us and not about Him. We as a body need to honor the whole body of Christ and quit the infighting that occurs with denominational territorial battles. Churches should not be defined by territory, space or name because we are all part of the body with different functions, slightly changed in theological approach and style of worship but with the basic belief that we all are sinners in need of Jesus' grace binding us together and knitting us into the body of Christ.

We are all in good company. Clinkers together making a difference for the kingdom. So from one brick to another, let us build the kingdom side by side held together by the love of Christ and bound by the Holy Spirit.

Much love

Preach