Are you a chicken?

Recently, I felt God speaking to me through some fun and games with the latest addition to our household.

Last year we bought two chickens, which we ironically named “Butter” and “Tandoori”. It hasn’t taken them long to claim the yard as their own and likewise dominate the dog, although she has learnt to chase them away from eating her food! The other day, however, they decided that our acreage was not enough and took themselves out for a wander down our semi-rural street. It took us some time to find them, amid our concerns about foxes and vehicles. They had found their way down to the overgrown driveway a couple of houses away, and were having a lovely time, totally unperturbed about our concern.

A day or so later, we suddenly had two extra chickens in our yard. It seems our neighbour’s chickens had caught the restlessness and decided they’d check out if our grass really was greener.

Then, Sunday morning, things stepped up a notch. At some point in the night, I heard chickens clucking like they’d laid an egg, which was unusual, but failed to concern me enough to get up and see what was going on. However, a little while after sunrise I heard them chatting away somewhere around our bedroom – the opposite side of the property to their coop, where they should have been, safe from foxes and other night predators.

The short story is that hubby went looking and eventually found them holed up under our bedroom – the space in which two of our dogs have often slept if they were out for the night. (We live on the side of a mountain, so not quite as inaccessible as you might think.) Somehow, they had managed to open their cage door and escape at some point after we had gone out for the evening. They were in no hurry to come out from under the house. Martin realised that they were in “laying mode”, but that they didn’t really want to lay their eggs where they were. In the end, he had to pick them up individually and carry them back to the coop, where they rushed straight up into the nesting boxes to lay their eggs.

Over the week, I had felt God’s prompting to pay attention to these scenarios. The idea that the chickens were breaking out, and were indeed, “flying the coop” took on a deeper meaning, especially in light of the words, “The King has left the building” that kept rattling around in my head toward the end of last year.

For those a bit younger, this statement has its origin with Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock’n’roll”. In order to calm the crowds screaming for more, or even just to get them to leave at the end of his concerts, the announcer would often say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building”. This has later morphed to “the King has left the building”.

When I heard this phrase in my head, though, I immediately knew it was about King Jesus. It was a reinforcement to me that it is well and truly time we shift our thoughts away from the church being a building. The perception church is what happens on a Sunday morning must become past history. We cannot continue to try to box God into a place, into a building or even a time frame. And it is well past time for us to stop expecting people to come into a place of our choosing to encounter God.

In contrast, the chickens flying the coop is about us, His people. In the world of visions and dreams, chickens can be representative of the people of God. (I think it relates back to Jesus looking to Jerusalem and longing to gather His people under His wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks, see Matt 23:37).

Just as I sensed that God is not constrained by the buildings we have constructed for Him, I felt that God is calling us out with Him; out of those things that have constrained us, or even those places and practices that have been about our own safety or comfort. Even the behaviour of the chickens wanting to get back into the coop to lay their eggs seemed to be a counter call to us to instead take our “best work” that we have previously given to “the church” out into the world for the Kingdom. In the past, we have perhaps seen the church and the Kingdom of God as somehow being synonymous. However, I believe many of us actually need to upgrade our understanding of just what “Church” means.

The idea that the Church is not a building but people has been doing the rounds for some years now, even decades. Unfortunately, while we might have many ideas about what Church is not, I am not convinced we have really nailed what “Church” actually is. Even though we might use terms like the “Body of Christ”, or family, these also have different connotations for each of us.

Heading back to the Bible is not immediately helpful either. The word translated to church was, in the original Greek language, “ecclesia”, which perhaps gives us more insight. The literal translation is “the gathering of those summoned”, and it was a term used in the secular world to indicate a political gathering of citizens. While there is a sense of governance around this, it would seem that rather than being hierarchical, all those deemed eligible had a say in the way in which the community operated and what was acceptable. It was quite democratic.

I wonder if we read our New Testament with a greater understanding of what the ecclesia meant to those first disciples it would change our view (and acceptance) of the way we tend to “run church” today?

Coming back to what I am specifically sensing from God around these two phrases, I have to mention the dreaded virus. As we slowly emerged from a lengthy lockdown last year, many were complaining that we couldn’t get back to “church as normal”. However, in our community, we had such a strong sense that we are not meant to. We have this amazing opportunity for substantial change in what is implied by the term “church”. I personally have loved the gatherings we have held outside our buildings, even though we have had a cold summer. It has felt so wonderful to connect with the outside world as we worship – both creation, as well as being visible and perhaps more accessible to the community around us, with people walking past getting a glimpse of what we are about and occasionally even joining us.

I believe with all my heart that God wants us to move out of our places of safety and comfort, out of hiding. I also believe that He wants a shift in our focus, from being a “church” that simply gathers together for our own needs, getting our weekly fix of spiritual input, to a people who, like the Israelites coming out of Egypt followed only where God was going. They didn’t follow a program, a formula, what seemed logical or even those who had come before them. They learnt to be wholly dependent on God.

In the season we are in, where there are so many differing opinions and ideas, where we seem to be in something of a minefield, it is ever more important for us to only go where He is going.

Will you follow?