Why Can't We Just Be "the BODY?"

I was at a meeting recently where a number of different oneness apostolic organizations were present, and sometimes I get the feeling that we spend more time worrying about which label we wear than we do the Gospel we share. I just wonder sometimes, why can't we just be referred to as "the BODY?"

It seems to me, that since its inception, the church has evolved into an institution or an organization rather than its original intent of an organism. The New Testament made it very clear that the church is the body of Christ. Sadly, today's version of "the church" is nothing more than a nice building, with a gymnasium, manicured lawns, good music, and an entertaining preacher. But "the church" that Jesus spoke of was NOT a building...it was PEOPLE! The church was NEVER intended to be confined to a building. When Jesus returns to call His church home, it will NOT be buildings that leave this earth...it will be people!

Follow Jesus for a few chapters and look past the man to see the movement: we see Jesus eat with sinners and talk to sinners. He would even go out of His way at times in order to touch a life and meet a need! But it seems like in efforts to protect His BODY, the current representation of Jesus Christ has been told to "come out and stay out" leaving no possibility for the world to be served, lives to be touched or needs to be met!

I'm NOT about compromising the message in any way, but the church has waited on the world to come to us for so long that we've actually become isolated institutions that keep to ourselves. Maybe some of our problem is that we're NOT worldly enough to really make a difference in the world. We've become so sidetracked with our organizations that we've lost contact with the very world that Jesus so desperately wants to save. We've sat back and waited on the world to change to the point that "the BODY" has set up atrophy and we can't move!

(The definition of atrophy is a wasting away of the body or of an organ, as from defective nutrition or nerve damage; degeneration or decline as from disuse; a decrease in size, a wasting away; to waste away, wither, or deteriorate.)

Jerry Cook wrote in his book titled, The Monday Morning Church- "When God chose to reveal himself to our world, he didn't send an angel with a message or a program or a preferred institutional structure. He sent Jesus. The Word, the message he had for us, was Jesus, bound not in leather, but skin; not to be read and put aside, but experienced. A message in flesh and blood-God walking off the page, walking out of all the religious trappings that sought to confine him, and walking right into the the lives of those of us who needed him but didn't know it. The forms, the rituals, the elaborate structures-we could could never find him there. So he wrapped himself in skin and came looking for us.

That is still his mode of operation. The Father is still revealed, only through flesh and blood. Only through people-people in whom his Spirit lives and through whom his heart reaches.

YOU are the church.
YOU are the revelation of Jesus.
YOU are the way others can know him."

So, to answer my own question, "why can't we just be the BODY?" We CAN! But we'll have to stop worrying about which label we wear, and focus more on the Gospel we share.

Get out of your building, and BE the BODY!