Stop Going to Church. Start Being It

Reclaiming the Temple We Were Meant to Be

Here is an oddity worth pondering. On any given Sunday morning, millions of people across the world put on their best clothes, drive to a building, sit in rows, listen to one voice amplified through speakers, sing songs someone else has chosen, deposit money in a basket, and return home. They call this "going to church."

To be sure, one can understand the practice. Many devoted believers participate in it, and they do so with genuine hearts and sincere motives. The question is not about their sincerity. The question is whether this pattern actually resembles what the New Testament writers had in mind when they spoke of the ekklesia, the called-out people of God (YHWH).

The biblical story tells us something different. It tells us that God has been working toward a particular goal from the beginning: to dwell with His people, not merely to be visited by them on special occasions in special buildings. The surprise of the gospel is not that God invites us to come to where He is. The surprise is that He has come to where we are, and taken up residence.

The Garden Where Heaven Touched Earth

Long before Israel erected a tent in the wilderness or Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem, there was a garden. We tend to think of Eden as simply a pleasant place where the first humans lived before everything went wrong. But the biblical writers understood Eden as something far more significant. It was the first temple, the original space where heaven and earth overlapped.

Consider the clues scattered through Genesis 2 and 3. God walked in the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). Think about that for a moment. The Creator of the universe, strolling through His garden, meeting with the people He had made. This is not merely poetry. It is a picture of intimacy, of divine presence dwelling with humanity.

The Hebrew reveals even more. When Genesis says that humanity was placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15), the verbs used are abad and shamar. These same words later describe the priestly service in the tabernacle (Numbers 3:7-8). The priests were to "serve and guard" the sacred space. Adam and Eve were doing the same thing in Eden. They were priest-gardeners, tending the place where God's presence dwelt.

When Israel's temple was finally built, what symbols filled it? Trees, rivers, gold, cherubim. All the imagery of Eden. The temple architects were not being randomly creative. They were pointing backward. They were saying, "This is what we lost. This is what we long to recover."

Eden was not simply a nice garden. It was God's dwelling place, His original design for how heaven and earth would exist together, with humanity serving as the living link between them. That is the point.

When Exile Required a New Meeting Place

The story did not end in the garden, of course. Humans chose their own way rather than God's way. They were sent east of Eden, away from the tree of life, barred from returning by cherubim with flaming swords. The question then became: How would God continue to dwell with His people?

The answer was the tabernacle, and later the temple. These structures were not arbitrary decisions. They were deliberate recreations of Eden's pattern. The lampstand resembled the tree of life. The cherubim appeared again, now woven into curtains and carved into walls. Rivers of water (in Solomon's temple, the massive bronze sea and the smaller basins) echoed the river that flowed from Eden. Even the progression from outer court to inner court to Holy of Holies mimicked the movement from the outer world into God's immediate presence.

Israel's worship was not inventing something new. It was remembering something old and looking forward to something greater. The temple said, "God still wants to be with His people." But it also said something else: "This is not yet the full restoration. This is a shadow, a placeholder, until the real thing arrives."

The prophets grasped this. They spoke of a day when God's glory would fill not just a building in Jerusalem but the whole earth (Habakkuk 2:14). They spoke of a new covenant written on hearts rather than stone tablets (Jeremiah 31:33). They imagined a time when the knowledge of God would be as natural and pervasive as water covering the sea.

They were describing what we might call the New Eden. And when that reality came, it arrived in a way nobody expected.

The Walking Temple

When Jesus (YHWShA) of Nazareth appeared in first-century Palestine, He did things that made the religious authorities deeply uncomfortable. He forgave sins without directing people to the temple sacrifices. He healed on the Sabbath. He declared that something "greater than the temple" was here (Matthew 12:6). And when challenged about His authority, He said something that sounded like pure blasphemy: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19).

They thought He was talking about Herod's magnificent structure, the pride of Jerusalem. John tells us Jesus was speaking of His body (John 2:21).

Here is what the early Christians came to understand: Jesus Himself was the new temple. Not a building made of stone, but a person. In Him, heaven and earth met again. In Him, the presence of God walked among humanity, not occasionally in a garden's cool evening, but constantly, in the heat of daily life, in the press of crowds, in the homes of sinners and saints alike.

When Jesus died and rose again, something shifted in the universe. The temple veil tore from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). God was declaring, "The old system is finished. The barriers are down. A new way has opened."

Fifty days later, at Pentecost, the next chapter began.

When the Spirit Came to Stay

Picture the scene in Acts 2. A roomful of Jesus's followers, waiting as He had instructed them. Suddenly, a sound like rushing wind filled the house. Tongues of fire appeared over each person. Not over a building. Not descending on an altar. Resting on people.

The symbolism is unmistakable. The fire that once filled the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-35) and the temple (1 Kings 8:10-11) now filled human beings. God's presence, which had dwelt in tents and buildings, had found a new address.

Paul put it plainly: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). He was not speaking metaphorically. He meant it literally. The Spirit of the living God had taken up residence in the hearts of believers.

Peter echoed the same reality: "You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). Notice the imagery. Living stones. Not dead ones quarried from the earth and stacked by human hands, but living, breathing people being assembled by God Himself into a dwelling place for His presence.

This is not a minor adjustment to temple theology. It is a complete revolution. God is no longer localized in a building on a hill in Jerusalem. He is mobilized in the bodies of His people, moving wherever they move, present wherever they gather, active wherever they serve.

The temple has left the building. God's presence now dwells in His people, individually and corporately. We are not people who go to where God is. We are people in whom God has chosen to live. That is the point.

The Problem with the Pastor's Palace

Now, with all this in mind, consider what has happened in much of modern Christianity. We have rebuilt the very system Jesus dismantled. We have taken the revolutionary idea of a living, dispersed temple and turned it back into a centralized, building-focused model.

I have sat through countless worship services where the entire experience revolves around a stage, a microphone, and one anointed voice. The people in the pews are spectators. They sing when told to sing, sit when told to sit, give when the basket comes around, listen when the sermon begins. Spiritual gifts remain on the platform. Authority concentrates in an office. And the building itself, often grand and expensive, becomes the locus of spiritual power.

I call this the Pastor's Palace. I say this not to mock but to name what I see: a reversion to patterns that look less like the New Testament church and more like the old temple system, or worse, like the royal courts Jesus confronted.

Granted, one can argue that buildings are neutral, that leadership structures are necessary, that order in worship is biblical. But what you cannot argue, not if you want to remain consistent with Paul and Peter and the whole witness of the New Testament, is that the building is where God primarily dwells or that spiritual authority should concentrate in one person while the rest of the body remains passive.

The New Testament knows nothing of such a system. It knows house churches where everyone contributes (1 Corinthians 14:26). It knows elders (plural) who shepherd together, not a singular pastor who rules alone. It knows the priesthood of all believers, not a professional clergy class with exclusive access to the sacred.

When we create Pastor's Palaces, we do something subtle but significant. We tell people that encountering God happens primarily in that building, during those hours, under that leader's ministry. We turn the gathered people back into an audience rather than a family. We make the building sacred and forget that the people are the temple.

This reverses the flow of the gospel. This is not a small problem.

The Kingdom That Moves with You

Let us return to the beginning. What was Eden? A place where God's presence filled the space and His people ruled and served alongside Him. What was the temple? An imperfect echo of Eden, a holding pattern until something better arrived. What did Jesus do? He became the true temple, then poured out His Spirit so that His followers would become the temple.

Now ask the question differently: What is the kingdom of God?

The kingdom is what it looks like when God is in charge. It is His rule, His reign, His presence making things new. The temple was always about the kingdom. It was the beachhead of heaven on earth, the place where God's authority held sway even while the rest of the world went its own way.

But now the kingdom is not confined to a building. It is not even confined to a nation. The kingdom lives in anyone in whom the Spirit dwells. When you walk into your workplace, you carry the kingdom with you. When you sit at your kitchen table with your family, heaven and earth are meeting there. When two or three believers gather in a living room to pray, to study Scripture, to encourage one another, they are the temple, and the kingdom is present.

You do not go to the kingdom. You carry it.

This changes everything. Your Monday morning is as sacred as Sunday morning. The conversation with your neighbor is as significant as the sermon you heard. Every place you stand is potential holy ground because God's presence goes with you.

And perhaps, in a world so fractured and uncertain, that is precisely what people need to see: not Christians driving to buildings to meet God, but Christians being the living temples through whom God meets the world.

From Spectator to Priest

What do we do, then? Do we abandon gathering together? Of course not. The New Testament repeatedly calls us to gather (Hebrews 10:24-25). The question is not whether we gather. The question is how we gather, and what we think we are doing when we do.

I have watched gatherings where every person brings something. One shares a Scripture that has been burning in their heart. Another leads a song. Someone prays for a need that has arisen. Another teaches. The gifts of the Spirit flow naturally because everyone understands they are priests, not spectators.

These gatherings feel different. They feel less like attending a religious performance and more like family dinner. There is leadership, certainly, but it is distributed. There is order, but it is organic rather than imposed. And when people leave, they do not feel like they have completed their religious duty for the week. They feel like they have participated in something living, something that will continue when they scatter into their homes and neighborhoods and workplaces.

This is not romanticism. This is the pattern we see in Acts, in Paul's letters, in the entire trajectory of the New Testament. God builds His temple out of living stones, not dead ones. He distributes His gifts throughout the body, not concentrating them in one person. He calls all His people to be priests, not creating a class system where some are close to God and others must approach through intermediaries.

Stop going to church. Start being it.

Not because gathering is wrong, but because the whole premise has shifted. You are not a visitor to a sacred building. You are a living stone in a spiritual house. The Spirit of God does not live in the building on the corner. He lives in you.

The Garden Rising Again

There is a trajectory in Scripture that runs from Eden through the exodus, through the temple, through the exile, through the incarnation and resurrection, through Pentecost, and forward to the new creation described in Revelation. It is the story of God dwelling with His people.

In Revelation 21, John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and a city coming down from God. He hears a voice saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God" (Revelation 21:3).

Notice what is absent from John's vision. No temple building. "I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord (YHWH) God the Almighty and the Lamb" (Revelation 21:22). The whole city is the temple. God's presence fills everything. The distinction between sacred space and ordinary space has collapsed because everything has become sacred.

That future reality is breaking into the present now, through the Spirit-filled people of God. When we gather, we are not play-acting at temple. We are the temple. When we scatter, we are not leaving God's presence behind. We are carrying it into the world.

The garden is rising again. Not in a return to innocence, but in a movement forward to glory. God is doing it not through buildings and programs and polished performances, but through ordinary people in whom His Spirit dwells, who live as the mobile temples He always intended.

The Pastor's Palace is not the goal. It never was. God's living temple is the goal. And you are it.