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Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.
A quarter century ago Tom Smith, a pastor in South Africa, was on the fast track.
Using his entrepreneurial spirit and ministry leadership gifts, he found himself presiding over a megachurch.
But the cost was high. Smith gradually succumbed to exhaustion and burnout. The work of God through him was crushing the work of God in him – an old story which all too many church leaders know by heart.
Tom and his wife decided to step away from ministry. They wrestled with a hard question: Did they have any vision or energy left to serve a local congregation?
They ultimately decided to begin again. They met with a small group in 2003, searching for a picture or metaphor that might describe the kind of church they hoped to become. They settled on the apostle Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
They named themselves the Claypot Church.
After discovering that earthenware vessels on the retail market are surprisingly expensive, they located a discarded clay pot at a local business. It was filled with mud and chipped here and there. In other words, it was exactly what they were looking for.
Smith recalls, “At the conclusion of one of our services we placed the pot in a big bag and broke it on the concrete floor. It symbolized our brokenness; everyone in the community took a broken piece home. All of us wrote a prayer on our shards and we came together to reassemble the pot. Although the pot is glued together, it still isn’t a picture of perfection. Yet when we put a candle in it, it radiated a glorious light.”
The Claypot Church in Johannesburg is not a big church. But it’s a humble church – launched on the premise that the strength and integrity of every congregation comes from Christ and not from us.
All too often, that reality is overlooked by local congregations.
Even more concerning is the fact that an increasing number of American Christians seem to be overlooking church altogether.
According to a 2025 report sponsored by the American Bible Society, approximately 45% of those who professed loyalty to Jesus had not attended a single church service during the previous six months. Their sentiment seemed to be, “Instead of joining what would surely turn out to be a dysfunctional fellowship, why shouldn’t I pursue a pathway of do-it-yourself discipleship?”
Author Nick Perrin has observed that for all too many people, worship services have become “little more than the weekly meeting of Jesus’ Facebook friends.”
Therefore, it must come as something of a surprise that the Apostles’ Creed identifies the discipline of gathering with other Christ-followers as a key article of faith: “I believe in the holy catholic church…”
Those words are worth parsing.
The word “catholic,” for instance, is not a creedal endorsement of the Roman Catholic Church. In truth, the Roman church borrowed the term from a number of early statements of faith, including the Apostles’ Creed.
“Catholic” springs from the Greek word katholikos, which derives from the preposition kata (“according to”) and the noun holos (“whole”). “Catholic” thus means “throughout the whole” or “universal.” Whenever we affirm that we believe in the catholic church, we’re declaring that we’re part of the global fellowship of Christ-pursuing brothers and sisters, regardless of time and place and denomination.
Paul makes it clear that sharing life with other Christ-followers is not an elective in the Christian curriculum nor a side dish we can pass up at God’s buffet table.
He uses the metaphor of “Christ’s Body” more than 30 times in his letters. The church is an organization only secondarily. Primarily the Body is an organism – a living association of women and men who are becoming more and more like Jesus, with Christ himself as the head. We are his arms, legs, hands, feet, sinews, and muscles.
Therefore we must choose to walk, serve, and love together. A disembodied limb or organ may be a great prop for a horror movie, but it’s certainly not going to achieve very much on its own.
That brings us to the word “holy,” which aligns with the next phrase in the Creed: “the communion of saints.”
The word “saint” has had an interesting history. During Christianity’s early centuries it came to represent a woman or a man of exceptional spiritual maturity. Well into the Middle Ages, in the Roman Catholic tradition, the word “saint” designated a deceased Christian of such purity and virtue that he or she could actually intercede for struggling Christians here on earth.
It seems clear that the apostle Paul considered saints to be ordinary followers of Jesus. They were rank and file disciples, including beginners, stragglers, and strugglers.
It’s worth noting that the word “saint” in the New Testament never applies to someone who is dead, but always to those who are living – and always to a group of living persons at that. The literal translation of the Greek word is “holy one.” On the pages of the Bible, holiness is closely connected with the idea of separation. Someone who follows Jesus is therefore one who is separate, or set apart, from the world with regard to priorities, thinking, and behavior.
So look around the next time you’re at a gathering of people who have enrolled as lifelong learners of Jesus. You are in the company of saints – God’s set-apart ones.
Take a deep breath. This is it. We are God’s Plan A to fulfill his mission on earth. We are the saints entrusted with getting it done.
Seriously?
Most of us have never seen anything like a “holy” congregation. So, why can’t we simply walk away from the messed-up people and hypocrites who inevitably surround us wherever we go to church?
The simple answer, in the words of African theologian John Mbiti, is “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.” It pleases God to accomplish my spiritual transformation by means of other broken people – through their partnerships, their prayers, and even (in ways we often cannot foresee) their most grievous failures.
In the end, we’re all members of the Claypot Church.
Which is a pretty wonderful thing.
After all, the cracks are what allows the Light to shine through.