Church Walls

I made a comment a couple of weeks ago to a friend that one way to break down the wall between the churched and non-churched is literally to have no walls. Walls essentially serve two functions. To keep someone or something out OR in.

The Communists tried to assert, for example, that the Berlin Wall was to keep the out the West. Instead, it was to imprison its own people.

I am very concerned that we in the Church has all resigned ourselves to Jefferson's dictum of the "Wall of Separation between Church and State." We make offensive forays into politics or take up defensive postures in the pews. Yet, we are losing the ability to interact with non-Christians in a back and forth fashion. It is either tending to attack or retreat, while jettisoning the whole middle ground of relationship, communication, and even simply getting to know one another. And not just long enough to spring the Gospel on them like some evangelizing Jack-in-the-Box.

When the New Testament writes of breaking down the walls, it is referring to the literal walls that separated Jews from Gentiles, first in the Temple and then everywhere else. Jesus busted down walls from the inside and broke free of the walls of gender, ethnicity, culture, and socio-economics. As those walls fall, the necessity for clear biblical truth becomes even more imperative. Too often we climb over these fallen bricks and leave the Bible behind. That is a tragic mistake. We must carry the Scriptures with us to the streets and creatively and imaginatively bring its truth to interact with those we meet.

Ephesians 2:14

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us