BE:the Church

Seeds Project Fellowship alum, Joe Davis, shares a poem from his most recent book, Remind Me Again.

The church is dying  
but the church will live again  
when we pass on life-giving culture and traditions. 

Not death-dealing weapons  
but our best healing instruments. 

You can’t be unchurched or overchurched 
when YOU’RE the church. 
God’s work is our work.  

Don’t have to say goodbye to high church or low church  
if we hold space for highs and lows of all those who soul
search and don’t turn them away when they say their soul hurts.  

When the body is a temple  
everything is a ritual. 
Re-embody and re-member 
the truth you already know. 

Each moment we breathe we become ecclesia 
when we meet wherever the Spirit is leading us. 
If the Bible is a library of letters and metaphors and not a book of
facts, what would it look like if we loved and lived like our life was a
book of acts? 

Instead we took an axe to hack chapters, burned green
pastures,  and made pastors into slave masters.
Our first love is calling us back to practice. 

Plan A was always plan BE: 
to be the change  
to be the church 
to be God’s hands and feet  
to be God’s justice standing in the street 

They can kill a revolutionary, but can’t kill a revolution. They can’t stop our
movement if we always keep it moving.  

When we remember how we, the church,  
are called to be the church,  
we’ll clothe and feed the people  
who need the people of the church– 
the kingdom can be within us and heaven can be on earth.  

The church is living and breathing.  
The church is birthing and bursting  
with new life and new meaning.  
The church is rising and thriving  
and will flourish beyond four walls 
when we’re building beyond the building  
a world that works for all.  

Reflection Questions

How can we, the Church, be the Church, through curiosity about the struggles, pains, and joys of the people around us?

Davis starts the poem by saying the church is dying, and ends with the church is rising. Church as we know it is changing. What might a resurrection of the church look like?