{"id":5320,"date":"2026-03-26T08:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5320"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:54:12","slug":"the-holy-catholic-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/the-holy-catholic-church\/","title":{"rendered":"The Holy Catholic Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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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.<\/em>
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A quarter century ago Tom Smith, a pastor in South Africa, was on the fast track.
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Using his entrepreneurial spirit and ministry leadership gifts, he found himself presiding over a megachurch.\u00a0
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But the cost was high.\u00a0Smith gradually succumbed to exhaustion and burnout.\u00a0The work of God through<\/em> him was crushing the work of God in<\/em> him \u2013 an old story which all too many church leaders know by heart.\u00a0
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Tom and his wife decided to step away from ministry.\u00a0They wrestled with a hard question:\u00a0Did they have any vision or energy left to serve a local congregation?\u00a0
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They ultimately decided to begin again.\u00a0They met with a small group in 2003, searching for a picture or metaphor that might describe the kind of church they hoped to become.\u00a0They settled on the apostle Paul\u2019s statement in 2 Corinthians 4:7: \u201cBut we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.\u201d\u00a0
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They named themselves the Claypot Church.\u00a0
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After discovering that earthenware vessels on the retail market are surprisingly expensive, they located a discarded clay pot at a local business.\u00a0It was filled with mud and chipped here and there. In other words, it was exactly what they were looking for.
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Smith recalls, \u201cAt the conclusion of one of our services we placed the pot in a big bag and broke it on the concrete floor.\u00a0It symbolized our brokenness; everyone in the community took a broken piece home.\u00a0All of us wrote a prayer on our shards and we came together to reassemble the pot.\u00a0Although the pot is glued together, it still isn\u2019t a picture of perfection.\u00a0Yet when we put a candle in it, it radiated a glorious light.\u201d
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The Claypot Church in Johannesburg is not a big church.\u00a0But it\u2019s a humble <\/em>church \u2013 launched on the premise that the strength and integrity of every congregation comes from Christ and not from us.
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All too often, that reality is overlooked by local congregations.
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Even more concerning is the fact that an increasing number of American Christians seem to be overlooking church altogether.
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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, \u201cInstead of joining what would surely turn out to be a dysfunctional fellowship, why shouldn\u2019t I pursue a pathway of do-it-yourself discipleship?\u201d\u00a0
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Author Nick Perrin has observed that for all too many people, worship services have become \u201clittle more than the weekly meeting of Jesus\u2019 Facebook friends.\u201d
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Therefore, it must come as something of a surprise that the Apostles\u2019 Creed identifies the discipline of gathering with other Christ-followers as a key article of faith: \u201cI believe in the holy catholic church\u2026\u201d
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Those words are worth parsing.
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The word \u201ccatholic,\u201d 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\u2019 Creed.
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\u201cCatholic\u201d springs from the Greek word katholikos<\/em>, which derives from the preposition kata<\/em> (\u201caccording to\u201d) and the noun holos<\/em> (\u201cwhole\u201d). \u201cCatholic\u201d thus means \u201cthroughout the whole\u201d or \u201cuniversal.\u201d Whenever we affirm that we believe in the catholic church, we\u2019re declaring that we\u2019re part of the global fellowship of Christ-pursuing brothers and sisters, regardless of time and place and denomination.
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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\u2019s buffet table.\u00a0
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He uses the metaphor of “Christ\u2019s Body\u201d more than 30 times in his letters.\u00a0The church is an organization<\/em> only secondarily.\u00a0Primarily the Body is an organism<\/em> \u2013 a living association of women and men who are becoming more and more like Jesus, with Christ himself as the head.\u00a0We are his arms, legs, hands, feet, sinews, and muscles.\u00a0
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Therefore we must choose to walk, serve, and love together.\u00a0A disembodied limb or organ may be a great prop for a horror movie, but it\u2019s certainly not going to achieve very much on its own.
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That brings us to the word \u201choly,\u201d which aligns with the next phrase in the Creed: \u201cthe communion of saints.\u201d\u00a0
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The word \u201csaint\u201d has had an interesting history.\u00a0During Christianity’s early centuries it came to represent a woman or a man of exceptional spiritual maturity.\u00a0Well into the Middle Ages, in the Roman Catholic tradition, the word \u201csaint\u201d designated a deceased Christian of such purity and virtue that he or she could actually intercede for struggling Christians here on earth.\u00a0
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It seems clear that the apostle Paul considered saints to be ordinary followers of Jesus.\u00a0They were rank and file disciples, including beginners, stragglers, and strugglers.
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It\u2019s worth noting that the word \u201csaint\u201d in the New Testament never applies to someone who is dead, but always to those who are living \u2013 and always to a group<\/em> of living persons at that.\u00a0The literal translation of the Greek word is \u201choly one.\u201d\u00a0On the pages of the Bible, holiness is closely connected with the idea of separation.\u00a0Someone who follows Jesus is therefore one who is separate, or set apart, from the world with regard to priorities, thinking, and behavior.\u00a0
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So look around the next time you\u2019re at a gathering of people who have enrolled as lifelong learners of Jesus.\u00a0You are in the company of saints \u2013 God\u2019s set-apart ones.
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Take a deep breath.\u00a0This is it.\u00a0We are God\u2019s Plan A to fulfill his mission on earth.\u00a0We are the saints entrusted with getting it done.
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Seriously?\u00a0<\/em>
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Most of us have never seen anything like a \u201choly\u201d congregation. So, why can\u2019t we simply walk away from the messed-up people and hypocrites who inevitably surround us wherever we go to church?\u00a0
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The simple answer, in the words of African theologian John Mbiti, is \u201cI am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.\u201d It pleases God to accomplish my spiritual transformation by means of other broken people \u2013 through their partnerships, their prayers, and even (in ways we often cannot foresee) their most grievous failures.\u00a0

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.

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Throughout 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.\u00a0A quarter century ago Tom Smith, a pastor in South Africa, was on the fast track.\u00a0Using his entrepreneurial spirit and ministry leadership gifts, he… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1080,1092,493],"class_list":["post-5320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apostles-creed","tag-body-of-christ","tag-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5322,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions\/5322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}