It is true that the church is universal and so everywhere, enveloping all creation. The church does not have borders or rails or walls.

I had a friend whose church was the massive entourage of workers that accompanied the global tours of a rock group. Marriages. Baptisms. Loitering. Listening. Word. Presence. Communion. He was their shepherd.

He was grateful for a friend who called his flock a church. He told me so.

My wisest friends in the Eastern churches tell me we can never say where the church is not, only where it is.

Lately, it’s become fashionable to say that the church is not in buildings with pews and altars and pulpits. And I understand the inexcusable beliefs and the practices, abuses, and harms that lead to such convictions.

I still see the church in unusual and unexpected places, like AA meetings and bars, and I celebrate its presence everywhere two or more are drawn by the human God.

And, God forgive me, I still see the church in its institutions. The Spirit of God is not limited by our judgments against one another or our experiences or our bad theology.

The Spirit falls and moves in places we judge as dead or broken or irredeemable.

Humility teaches us to love every gathering of God’s people for God loves them.

This is not a counsel to settle for anything less that the goodness and mercy, the beauty and justice, of Jesus Christ.

We welcome the fire of his restorative works that will eventually make of us gods, beginning with our own house, but we do not say where the church is not.