In 1985, forty-six of the most famous musicians on earth came together for one night to record ​“We are the World” for charity.

A sign taped to the studio entrance read Check your ego at the door.

Bob Dylan, shy and awkward, apparently took the sign to heart because when his solo part arrived he forgot how to sing. After a lot of mumbling and fumbling, Lionel Richie intervened. 

“Bob, I think you need to go see Stevie.” 

On the other side of the studio, Stevie Wonder had been doing what millions of us have done at some point — a Bob Dylan impression.

Moments later, at a piano side by side, Stevie Wonder reminded Bob Dylan how to be Bob Dylan — who then went back to the mic and nailed the part. (I learned this story from Taylor Leonhardt, who turned it into an incredible song.)

Earlier this week, King Charles walked into the U.S. Capitol Building to deliver a speech from the unique position of an outsider whose power is soft and whose post will never be up for re-election. He spoke to Congress with grace and gravitas, and something remarkable happened. The King of the United Kingdom brought both left and right to a standing ovation and reminded America of who she is and what she stands for. 

This morning, we released a new Friends in Formation episode responding to a listener’s question: What do you think God is doing in the church in America today?

So I thought it might help us — followers of Jesus, regardless of where we live — to have someone with an outside perspective remind us what the Church is and who we are as the people of God.

Most of these Renovaré Weekly intros are brief. Right now, I’m at 250 words, and normally I’d hand you over to the rest of the newsletter. But today I’m including 700 words from a theologian you may not know. They’ll take three minutes to read — maybe four or five if you let them linger. However long, it’s time well spent. I’ll tell you who wrote them, and when, at the end. 

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The Church, then, is not at all an organization, nor yet the sum-total of all its organizations: it is an organism; it is the people of a faith, the people of the Kingdom of God. 

We speak now not of the churches, but of the Church — and of a far higher sense of peoplehood than most of us have known. 

We are not the people of the Rev. Dr. ___’s church, held there by the power of the Rev. Dr. ___’s oratory — or in spite of it, by a very stubborn loyalty. 

We are not the people of the Presbyterian, the Methodist, or the Baptist churches, challenged by the worthy programs of these churches and finding fellowship in them. 

We are not people of good will, concerned for the foundations of society, aware that these are the gifts of religion to society, and so supporters of our churches. 

We are the people of the Church. And the Church is greater than the churches. 

As the true Israel of God’s purpose was not equal to the Israelite nation, so is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ not equal to the Christian churches. It is in every one of them, yet beyond all of them — so much so that no church may claim to be the One True Church without self-deification and blasphemy. 

The Church is an invisible thing. It cuts across the membership rolls of the churches along a line no ecclesiastical statistician could follow, and reaches out to include the most improbable publicans and sinners. It breathes in and out of the forms and standards of the churches like a wind blowing ​“where it wills”: one may indeed ​“hear the sound of it,” but there is no telling ​“whence it comes or whither it goes” (John 3:8). 

The Church is a supra-earthly community transcending time and space. In it one sits down with Father Abraham and the Twelve, with the Christian brother in the pew and the Christian brother in China. It is the community of all who have heard the sound of the Kingdom of God drawing near, and have said Yes to its coming. It is the new Israel, the new people of God, One Holy Church Universal. 

It is not for this Church that we have feared. On the contrary, we have feared because we did not see her and, not seeing her, saw only those churches which we could see. It is for these that we have feared. We have been appalled at their shortcomings, dismayed at their weakness. 

They have no power to redeem society and to make it the Kingdom of God, because they are themselves attached to society, involved in society, and participants in its sin. They cannot win the victory of Christ, for it does not make sense to imagine that Christ’s Kingdom of righteousness can be procured in terms of the activities and goals of only relatively righteous people.

No visible church, nor yet all of them sitting in ecumenical session, can produce that Kingdom for so much as five minutes. On the contrary, the visible churches are condemned to lie ever at the mercy of Caesar. He can bring them to terms or destroy them. But that is not the Church. 

For over these frail weak churches there towers this other Church, the Church Invisible. She is a new race of Christian people. And for her the New Testament knows no shadow of fear at all, nor need we. She does not fear Caesar’s Rome, for she will outlive both Caesar and Rome and all the successor states of Caesar’s Rome. Visible churches may be tortured, brought into conformity, or destroyed; but the Church they cannot kill. Neither Nebuchadnezzar’s army nor Nero’s legions… has that power. The Church is the new Israel — the people of a faith, the people of the Kingdom of God. And a people, so long as it remains a people, is indestructible. That is the New Testament church that we are called to be….

Our immediate program, therefore, is to cease for the moment to talk of programs and to engage in self-examination and confession of sin. We are to stand before the New Testament church and receive correction. 

Everything has changed, and the Church has changed; yet she has changed not one bit. We are still the New Testament church — or we are no church. And if we are that Church, then we have no program but its program: to be and to produce in the world the true Israel of God’s purpose, the covenant people of his Kingdom.* 

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John Bright wrote these words in The Kingdom of God, a meaty book worth the effort. While reading his prophetic words that speak deeply to our current situation, I had to keep reminding myself the book was written seventy-three years ago.

So, what is God doing today? God is calling us to be the Church, a people known by our love and our listening, a people committed, yes, to worshipping with concrete forms even when we don’t feel like it, but who remember the forms will change and pass away while the Kingdom of God — that realm where what God wants done is done — is unshakable. That Kingdom is not only unshakable, it’s accessible now, and inviting us to participate in the fullness of its coming through yielding ourselves to its King.