Six People And A Boiler

He does the gutters in October. He has done them in October for nineteen years.

He cuts the grass from about April. He bleeds that boiler twice a winter and he knows every noise it makes and roughly what each one means. There is a slate off the north side that he will get to in the spring, and he has been saying that for two springs, and he will get to it.

There are six of them in there on a good Sunday.

Here is the question he has not been able to answer for about two years, and he has never once said it out loud to another person.

Is he keeping a church or a museum?

Because a museum is a building you maintain for the sake of the past. It is a real thing to do and it is not a shameful thing to do, and people spend their lives doing it and they are right to.

But it is a different job, and he thinks he would want to know which one he is doing.

He has looked for the answer in the obvious places. Are people coming to Christ. Sometimes, actually, more than you would think for six. Is anybody being helped. Yes. Does anything happen in there that would not happen if the building were locked. He thinks so, and he cannot prove it.

And every October he goes up that ladder anyway, in the cold, on his own, and cleans out the gutters of a building that six people use.

If you are keeping something going on your own, come and get a flask. There is one going round and nobody out here is asking you anything.

What He said to a small church

There are seven letters at the front of Revelation, and most of them contain a rebuke. One of them contains almost nothing but commendation, and it is written to the weakest church on the list.

I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.Revelation 3:8

Read the order of it.

I know thy works. That is first. Before anything is said about their size or their condition, He says He has seen what they do.

Then the open door. Then the reason, and the reason has three parts, and the first one is startling. For thou hast a little strength.

He is not saying that despite their little strength He has opened a door. The word for is doing the work: the little strength is listed alongside keeping His word and not denying His name, as part of why.

You are inside a letter where a little strength is named as a commendation rather than as a problem. Revelation 3:8 puts thou hast a little strength beside hast kept my word and hast not denied my name, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept all three in the same clause, which means what you have got has already been described by Christ and He did not describe it as a shortage.

The question about the museum

Now the question itself, because it deserves a proper answer rather than reassurance.

A museum keeps a building for the sake of what happened in it. A church keeps a building for the sake of what is happening in it.

You already gave the test earlier without noticing. Does anything happen in there that would not happen if the building were locked?

You said yes. You said you could not prove it.

You are able to know a thing without being able to prove it, and Scripture is full of works that were known before they were visible. Revelation 3:8 opens with I know thy works, spoken to a church whose works were evidently not impressing anybody, and it is the same Spirit who searches the deep things, which means the evidence you cannot produce has already been seen by the only party whose assessment settles the question.

What nineteen Octobers actually are

Here is a thing worth turning round.

You have been treating the gutters as maintenance: building work, the unglamorous part that has to be done so that the real thing can happen. That is not what it is. Nineteen Octobers on a ladder, alone, in the cold, for six people, with nobody watching and nobody thanking anybody, is not maintenance. That is the whole of what Revelation 3:8 is describing, done in a gutter.

You have been performing the commendation rather than preparing for it. Colossians 3:23 says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, and it puts the ordinary work directly under the heading of things done to Christ rather than for a congregation, and it is the same Spirit who fills a workman's hands, which means the ladder in October has been church rather than the thing that keeps church possible.