I certainly don’t pretend to be the arbiter on who can have a church and who can’t.  But I admit to being quite curious as to why some people want to call what they’re doing “church.”  Especially when it’s this:

A building in Santa Cruz, Calif., is being converted into a worship space and public brewery by a pro-gay church that plans to donate some of its beer proceeds to Planned Parenthood, according to reports.

Members of the Greater Purpose Community Church now meet on Sundays at a food lounge to pray, listen and drink beer, KNTV reports…

Planned Parenthood has offices in the former bookstore VanHall plans to turn into a brewery by next summer, The Santa Cruz Good Times weekly newspaper reported.

“A church that serves beer and gives the profits away to places like Planned Parenthood is really exciting to me,” the pastor told the paper.

This could be the consequence of watering down our language to the point where the word “church” means nothing beyond a group of people with shared beliefs.  But “church” means something, and it has been the same thing for nearly 2000 years.  Paul defined it for us in his letter to the believers in Ephesus, writing that Christ was the head of the church, and the church was the body of Christ.  It exists for two primary reasons:

1. Point all people to Christ as Lord.

2. Bind believers together.

Now, call me crazy, but a social group that congregates to drink beer and celebrate things that offend the mind of Christ aren’t doing either of those things.  So back to my original question: why call themselves a church?

Don’t misunderstand.  This Greater Purpose posse has every right to meet together, on Sundays or any other day, make and drink beer, go to gay pride parades, preach the glories of certain manmade political causes, make money just to give it away to organizations that specialize in killing children for profit.  But that isn’t a church.  So why are we calling it one?

It’s the same principle as we faced with the tiny, insignificant Westboro cult that called themselves “Baptist” as well as a “church.”  They were most assuredly neither.  They didn’t keep with Baptist or Christian doctrine, they didn’t preach Christ, and by all accounts were little more than an angry, unhinged family desperate for attention.  It was always beyond annoying that American media gave them precisely what they wanted – publicity – and did so by habitually and inappropriately applying the “Baptist church” label. 

So maybe it’s asking too much, but while people can call themselves whatever they want to call themselves, it sure would be nice if responsible journalists, media sources, and the rest of the civilized world would note that words have meaning.  And if a group is primarily focused on something other than the exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord, whether it’s marching in gay pride parades or harassing them, they aren’t a church, so stop calling them that.