What is church?

On Saturday, we went to a neighbourhood called Los Angeles. It’s a rougher part of town, but here, some members of Comunidad PAS (Rosa and Hernan’s church) have set up some programs throughout the week.

Every week on Saturday morning, there is a gathering here of about 40 children and youth and many adults who like to cook, teach, and hang out with kids. Most of the children and youth have come from Venezuela. They invited our team to do the activity and teaching time, so we prepared a short lesson based on God providing manna to the Israelites in the desert. We sang a few songs with fun actions and dancing, acted out the story, encouraged the children to trust God for their daily bread from Psalm 23, and played some games with balloons and music.

Juvy did the teaching time and her message was very profound. Juvy had been sharing with us that after travelling to many places, she has learned to see “poverty” differently. When we were visiting the community of believers in Guajira, she did not see their limited food options, few personal possessions, and living situation as poor, because they were so rich in Christ, as you could see by their love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, and more. In contrast, she observed that tragic poverty is found where they may have many material possessions but no relationship with Jesus. So Juvy encouraged all of us have a relationship with “Our Father in heaven” and to ask and thank him daily for today’s bread. She affirmed how loved and special the children are.

We were really honored to have the chance to share, worship, and talk about God with them. But it really impressed us when after our “presentation” the kids did their brief “presentation.” The teacher asked them question after question about God’s word and his commands, and like a choir, they would all loudly and in unison recite the answer together. We could see that they are really being armed and trained in righteousness.

After sharing a delicious meal that was lovingly cooked upstairs, we moved on to a time with about 20 ladies. Also at Los Angeles is a regular gathering of women entrepreneurs that we mentioned in our prayer requests. This wasn’t a trade show or motivational speaker or anything like that. Rather, most of these women came from Venezuela because of the economic crisis. Before they had established homes, vehicles, families, kids in private Christian school. But when the crisis happened, one woman who used to be a chemistry teacher and buy specialty lattes, ended up having to learn how to make coffee to sell to passer bys, one cup at a time. This weekly gathering was formed to be a place of safety and rest, equipping and training in practical skills and creating wares, and also sharing the daily bread that they had. Now, this chemistry teacher’s current business is to make special candles using coconut and soy oil in recycled containers, scented with herbs from her garden. The candles are not just for ambiance and rest in the Lord, but she teaches the customers to take the oil as it melts, and build connection with their children and family as they massage it into their hands and arms. So beautiful.

With the white headband is the chemistry teacher turned creative artisan with

When we were in the car that morning heading to Los Angeles, I had asked Rosa whether this place was a church. She said it was a foundation, so I asked her to define “iglesia” (church) and particularly “fundación” (foundation) – a word that we have been hearing a lot. Rosa said that the iglesia is more of the place to worship on Sunday, whereas a fundación is formed when the church wants to outreach to the community. On a practical level, because of money laundering issues, the government requires that when church receives larger amounts of funds, they must demonstrate how that money is being used for those outside of the church. But not every church is a foundation. Creating and maintaining a foundation is a lot of work. Becca (Rosa’s daughter) was telling us that when the crisis first happened, they saw the need to help take care of and feed the kids whose moms were just trying to sell water and coffee next to the roads. Becca said that she and her friend went door to door, asking if people were willing to donate money so that they could buy food to serve these families.

On this trip, we have met so many fundacións - art, sports, small business – movements of the church for the community. Daniel said it well that the church is not a place you go to. Rather, the church is the one who goes out into the community.

Lord, help each of us to respond to your knocking in our lives and in our churches, come in and take over every corner of our lives, and lead us out to all the millions of lovely places where you dwell and work.