BY TAMMY SMITH

The following is one of some 17 additional articles (beyond the top three winners) accepted in our 1998 AnchorPoints Essay Contest for young writers.—Editors.

ADDY, YOU COULD BEAT UP UNCLE Jim, couldn’t you?” My 6-year-old brother was serious.

“And why would I want to beat up Uncle Jim, son?” Dad responded. “He’s my friend.”

My brother remained undaunted, “But if you really wanted to, you could, Daddy!”

“Well, now,” explained Dad patiently, “Uncle Jim is as big as I am and quite as strong or maybe a little stronger. He could most probably beat me up.”

My brother shot my father a look of total disbelief. And I shared his belief that Dad was the biggest, toughest, strongest man in the world. Until I hit my teens. Overnight my father changed into a very ordinary, middle-aged man with some very old-fashioned ideas. Dad hadn’t changed; I had.

I felt the same way about my church. Church was a good place, maybe a little boring at times, but essentially good. And then my greatly admired junior Sabbath school teacher ran off with another man, after teaching us all that good stuff about happy marriages. That was only the tip of the iceberg. As the years accumulated more rumors and actual sordid happenings in the church, I became cynical. The church was not what it should be. The church was full of hypocrites. The church . . .

Wait a minute. Who or what is this nameless church? The Seventh-day Adventist Church consists of millions of individual persons, running the entire gamut of qualities from A to Z:  bored, active, loving, selfish, sincere, hypocritical, giving, hurting, confused, wise, worn-out, fragile, insensitive, lazy, hardworking, tactful, hopeful, abused, critical, humble. People every bit as human as I am. Every bit as human as you are. We are the church.

Specializing in the Impossible
So what’s holding together millions of individuals, with different skin colors, different life expectancies, different languages, different ideas, different cultures? Nothing short of a miracle. Nothing short of a miracle!

And that miracle has a name: It’s Jesus. The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

God has always specialized in the impossible (Matt. 19:26). We can trace our spiritual roots back to an impossible promise given to a childless old man (Gen. 12:1-3). God made the impossible possible and gave Abraham plenty of descendants. He then brought the whole motley bunch out of slavery, loaded with everything of value from Egypt. The “church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38) had the Red Sea open for them, breakfast arrive in front of their tents, and water fountains come from rocks. They weren’t perfect—they had moaners, idolaters, thieves, gluttons, and leader-bashers among them. But God quietly set about purifying and cleansing—individually.

God’s phenomenal patience stretched on through the major and minor prophets, in repeated calls to His church to experience salvation personally and then extend the invitation to others (Isa. 56:7). There were those who responded positively. And there were those who were always talking back to God. But God had the final Word—He was called Jesus (John 1:1-3).

In Jesus, God began another impossible task. Taking up where the Old Testament church  left off, Jesus began training a handful of bickering disciples, 12 men who went on to turn the then-known world upside down for Christ. And when Satan tried to stamp out the fledgling church with persecution, God did the impossible: the church went global. When Satan

tried smothering the church’s lifeblood through human-made teachings during the Dark Ages, God kept the embers glowing in Waldensian mountain hideouts, gently fanning the flame of truth into the wildfire of the Reformation. And when the church again settled back into complacency, God once again did the impossible: He called a small group of young people (practically all under the age of 30), and helped them rediscover gems from Scripture that had been lost.

And that’s where you and I and millions of other Seventh-day Advent-ists come in. We are part of the miracle God performed through our pioneers. We have a history to make us stand tall. A history full both of human stupidity and God’s patience and miraculous power.

God has always had His own ideals for the church. Here are four of my favorites.

1. The Church as a Body.
(1 Cor. 12:12-23). I find this metaphor particularly relevant. After all, each of us has a body. And who has never gotten a finger caught in a door and felt their stomach knot as they howled in pain? As part of the body of Christ, I’m intricately connected to you. Your pain and loss is directly or indirectly mine. I need to be more sensitive toward you. We need to stick together. Without you I won’t be going anywhere.

2. The Church as a Temple.
I’ve normally thought of churches as being fairly static, stationary buildings that perhaps get recarpeted every 10 years. Paul, however, speaks of the church as being a temple made up of living stones (1 Cor. 3:9-16).

My experience in the country of Peru a while back gave me a glimpse of the church as a “living” temple. In Peru the Adventist membership way outgrows the buildings or the available funds. On first visiting a church in a particular area, you may find 40 members worshiping on a dirt floor with wooden planks for pews and reed mats for walls and roof. Within six months, however, the foundations for a new building will have been dug, and the membership will have grown to 60. Three months later two walls are up and a cement floor has been laid, and the membership is up to 70. Six months later the baptistry is in, the other two walls are up, and the membership is up to 100. A year later the roof is on, there are wooden benches, and membership has reached 150. However, finer finishings will have to wait, as the church has by now started a company that’s worshiping on a dirt floor with reed mats for walls and roof, and extra building funds will have to go into helping the new company get on its feet.

I think that Paul is referring to temples such as that—on the move, each wall supporting the other. You and I together as living stones in this church can become a dynamic landmark for Christ.

3. The Church as a Bride.
I love weddings. Anyone’s wedding, in fact. And I don’t even have to know the bridal party. Even having been a bride hasn’t cured me. I go on sneaking uninvited to the back of churches where there’s a wedding. There’s just something so appealing about all those beautiful flower arrangements—and then there’s the bride. Any old plain Jane becomes a beauty, arrayed in white and glowing with happiness.

I suppose the metaphor of the church as a bride was written especially for me: “I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband to them, saith the Lord” (Jer. 31:32). “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). In God’s eyes the church, with all its faults, is no plain Jane. You and I become radiantly beautiful as we fall in love with Jesus and get wrapped up in the purity of what He has done for us.

4. The Church as a Family.
For me, the church as family is more than a metaphor. It’s actual reality. It’s my family. When all my flesh and blood family were a continent away, the church where I lived in Peru was family to me. People who motivated me. People who were as  excited as I was over my little girl’s first words. People who mourned with us over the loss of our first child. Not crowds and crowds of people, just a few, just my family.

Some time ago my parents were touring Europe, with a short two-day layover in Rome. It being Sabbath, they decided to go to church. My parents don’t speak a word of Italian, but were made to feel welcome. A woman who spoke English translated the service for them and then insisted on taking them home for lunch, and to see certain interesting sights in the afternoon. Nor did the hospitality end there. The woman and her husband vacated their bedroom, sleeping on the living room floor, just so my parents could have their bed. Finally, they took my parents to the airport and even helped them check in.

My mother, overwhelmed by such kindness, tried to express her thanks. “It is the least one can do for family,” the woman said with a smile. 

Family? Yes, you and I are probably complete strangers at the moment. But we’re a family (see Eph. 3:15).

As you read about the wonderful church family we have, some unpleasant or downright hurtful memories you have experienced may filter back to you. But I appeal to you not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Wait! The idea of family is real. There is hope.

5. The Church as a Remnant.
The word “remnant” means that which remains. This could mean the last bitter dregs in the teacup or the gold glowing a fierce red as it comes from the purifying oven. The gold is all that’s left of the large quantities of ion ore fed into the ovens. But now, with all impurities burned away, only pure gold remains.

God has always had a remnant throughout history. During times of apostasy in Israel there was always a remnant. Later the Protestant Reformation called a remnant out of the old decayed church system. We often refer to the Adventist Church as the remnant church. Biblically speaking, that is what we are (Rev. 12:17).

Seventh-day Adventists Believe . . . The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. In continuity with the people of God in Old Testament times, we are called out from the world; and we join together for worship, for fellowship, for instruction in the Word, for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, for service to all mankind, and for the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church derives its authority from Christ, who is the incarnate Word, and from the Scriptures, which are the written Word. The church is God’s family; adopted by Him as children, its members live on the basis of the new covenant. The church is the body of Christ, a community of faith of which Christ Himself is the Head. The church is the bride for whom Christ died that He might sanctify and cleanse her. At His return in triumph, He will present her to Himself a glorious church, the faithful of all the ages, the purchase of His blood, not having spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish. (Gen. 12:3; Acts 7:38; Eph. 4:11-15; 3:8-11; Matt. 28:19, 20; 16:13-20; 18:18; Eph. 2:19-22; 1:22, 23; 5:23-27; Col. 1:17, 18.) —Fundamental Belief No. 11. The Adventist Church’s 27 Fundamental Beliefs

But merely hiding under a name does not make us the remnant. God’s purifying system—quietly and individually—continues even in the Adventist Church. God is still sorting the gold from the dross—a process that will go on until only gold remains. So if you’ve been hurt by someone claiming to be a part of the Adventist family, don’t give up on the entire family. Leave the sorting to God. This experience may be part of your own refining fire. God will take the church through the purifying process with or without us.

That, I guess, is my reason for sticking around. God always does the impossible. As I look at the enormous mission of taking this gospel of the kingdom to our complex world (comprised of secular people, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and a bewildering variety of Christian groups), I could feel overwhelmed. As I look into the church and see us pulling to the left, pulling to the right, and arguing, I could feel disillusioned. As I look into my own life and see broken promises and twisting contradictions, I could feel hopeless. But Jesus has promised “to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind . . . holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27, NRSV).

God always does the impossible. I want to be a part of His miracle.

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Tammy Smith is a stay-at-home mother of three little girls and writes from Dickson, Tennessee.