From Pastor Biar’s Pen 

It Is Good to Picnic

            Next Sunday is our annual church picnic.  Which means it’s a good time to remember and reflect upon what the church actually is. It’s a bit of a linguistic hurdle to get over whenever a church gets mentioned, because one must clarify whether one is referring to a faith tradition, a particular grouping of people within that faith tradition, or the building in which they meet, as all three meanings have coalesced into the one, all-purpose word.

            That word, “church” comes to us from the German Kirche which was borrowed from the Greek kyriakon doma, which means “The Lord’s house,” which originally referred to the worship space where Christians gathered which then grew in usage to cover the people gathered there as well, so that now when you go to the opening chapters of St. John’s Revelation in your English translation, you read “The Letters to the Seven Churches.” However, if you were to instead study your Greek Apokalypsis Joannou, you would see that those letters are addressed to the seven ekklesiais, the word which usually gets translated to “church.” However, within our understanding, the ekklesia would more accurately be translated as “the congregation” so as to avoid confusing it with the building. When you read about “the Church” in the Scriptures, you are reading about the gathering of the people, the community that is formed. And while, yes, we our community is centered around the worship of our Lord and striving to be His Hands and Feet in the world as we are called to do, we are a community. We are not just the Church when we gather for that hour on Sunday morning, but we are also the Church when we spend time together, be it in service projects, hobbies, or simply time in the fellowship hall sharing a meal. 

            So let us gather together and strengthen our bonds as we once more remember that we all exist for the sake of one another, forming and strengthening the community of St. John’s as we continue to be the Church here in Fallon.

God’s Blessings,  Pastor Biar

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