“Who’s church is it anyway?” Great question and the answer is even greater. It is God’s church, period! We don’t own it, we didn’t pay for it, so it’s really not ours. God owns it because He purchased it with the blood of His precious Son, Jesus.

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28)

Clearly the church belongs to God. Paul is careful to point out that it is “the church of God”, meaning the church is God’s personal possession. To treat it as anything else is to profane it and bring it down to a level God never intended. Yes, we have a responsibility but that responsibility is derived from and delegated by God.

I’m afraid that sometimes when people talk about “my church” they are being possessive and territorial. It’s unsure whether this is intentional or unintentional, but I fear the attitude of the church being our personal possession is a dangerous trend. We feel like we paid for it and therefore we own it. The reason for this comes from the attitude that since we pay the bills and mortgage every month that we now own the church. Our Western culture of property ownership has trickled into our theology. Instead of wielding our Bibles we hold up the deed to the church. This mindset thinks more in terms of the property or buildings or rooms or stuff in the building instead of people. I hope we all realize that the church is not possessions but people.

The tragic fallout of this wrong thinking is that God will go ahead and let us “own the church.” He won’t be there but He’ll say, “Go ahead and take possession, I’m out.” But the tragedy doesn’t end there. We can become so attached to the physical campus of a church that we neglect the spiritual needs of the people.

God saved us individually and personally, but He saved us and placed us corporately into His church. We cannot claim to be a Christian without the church and we cannot claim to be a church without Christians. A church without believers is just a building.

The church is God’s instrument to get the gospel out to the world. We cannot afford to become territorial and neglectful when it comes to God’s church.

Grace & Peace,

Scott