If you don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself. My name is FLAME, also known as Marcus Gray. I am a Christian rap artist who has been on a lifelong journey for biblical truth, and I’ve found my home in confessional Lutheranism. Critics who once supported me view me as having fallen from great heights. Some even think I’ve fallen from grace and have embraced false teaching, that I’ve been drawn away from truth and am now obsessed with propping up Dr. Luther above Jesus. Or worse, in their minds, that I’ve become Roman Catholic! “Lord, have mercy,” they cry. The distance in their minds between Jesus’ earthly ministry, culminating in His finished work on the cross, and the ongoing dwelling of God’s presence in our lives as expressed in the sacramental life of the church is as vast as the earth is from the sun.

“The church is not a building.” Have you ever heard someone say this? I know I have! This statement is true on its surface—the church is the whole people of God, called from among every nation to belong to the Body of Christ. The church is also the gathering of these people in a specific location around the Word and Sacraments that Jesus has instituted for us. When people say, “The church is not a building,” what do they mean by that statement, and is the sentiment expressed true or false?

It was Easter Sunday at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, NY. The tiny urban neighborhood church was crowded with saints singing “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” at the top of their lungs, their song rising to the roof as incense. New LCMS Lutheran converts Janine Bolling and Gerard Bolling, brother and sister by blood, with their entire Brooklyn family watching, were to become brother and sister in Christ, with the entire family of God both gazing down from heaven and gazing forward from the hot wooden pews in the not-yet-air-conditioned sanctuary.