Jesus said that we must build our house on a solid foundation. He said that unless we listened to his teachings and followed them, the house that we build will fall flat when trouble comes. I think this is applicable to the church as well as to our individual lives.
There have been many foundations on which churches have been built over the centuries. Some have been built on the authority of a man or council of men. Some have been built on this creed or that confession. Others have claimed that they were built on Scripture alone. Some have even been established on the foundation of a political leader's ideas of church and state. Today, some churches are built on a foundation of building a large organization. Others are built on a certain idea of what's going to happen in the end. There are churches erected on the foundation of doing things differently from the way they've always been done. Others are established on building community, or helping other people.
Not all of these things are bad or useless. Some of them are very good. People are brought to faith and Christians are built up by many of these things. The problem comes when we make anything other than Jesus Christ the foundation. When anything else is the base of the house we are building, there will be strong areas to be sure. There will also be areas that will be terribly weak, with holes and other defects. It is those weak areas that will cause the house to eventually come crumbling down.
Like our lives, our churches must be built on Jesus Christ and his teachings. He is the head of the church, and we are his body. He is the sole reason the church exists. He is everything. Let us make sure that our lives and our communities of faith, regardless of what we call them, are built on the only foundation guaranteed to be strong and sure - Jesus.
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