Church: A Place to BECOME - Part 1

The View From Above: Thoughts to Help With Everyday Life

August 19, 2026

Guest Contributor: Pastor Harold Warner — Part 3

Church: A Place to BECOME — Part I

Alright, let’s do a simple mental imagery experiment this morning.

When you think of the church, what picture best represents your understanding?

First: A full-service luxury resort offering a host of amenities and designed for optimal personal comfort.

Or second: A construction site with signs warning:

“HARD HAT AREA — BUILDING UNDER CONSTRUCTION.”

If you answered the latter, then you are thinking biblically.

The church is not only a place to belong, but also a place to become.

It is God’s community designed to change us.

The Bible word that describes this lifelong process is sanctification: the work of being set apart from sin and set apart to God.

And here is an important realization:

SANCTIFICATION IS A COMMUNITY PROJECT.

Belonging inherently propels believers to become.

I grew up singing an old praise chorus about working on a building. The chorus was very simple—which is probably why we can still remember those songs 50 years later—but it captured a vital truth about the church’s foundational identity.

The church is not merely a sentimental community.

It is the fellowship through which believers mature spiritually, experience God’s presence, and live out the Gospel’s transformative power.

In other words:

All of us are works in progress.

None of us have arrived.

God Is Building Something

Two confirming texts point this out.

Scripture Focus

Ephesians 2:19

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household.”

Here is the ultimate sense of belonging:

A citizen in God’s Kingdom and a member of His forever family!

But notice what immediately follows:

Ephesians 2:22

“And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”

Being built together.

This is construction language. It means building together in company with others.

God is doing something in us that was never intended to happen in isolation.

Paul emphasizes this again:

Ephesians 4:12–13

“To equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

That’s what this building project is intended to accomplish:

To make us increasingly more like Jesus.

So, can you say this about yourself?

WORK UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

More Than “What Can the Church Do for Me?”

Remember, I’m talking this week about the church’s lived reality.

That means we’re going to have to change our me-centered approach that asks only:

“What can the church do for me?”

We also have to confront the mentality of a consumer who is ruled by what I can get.

That attitude usually results in an independent spirit accompanied by a tendency to always be critical.

It’s more the profile of someone “dating” the church than someone in a serious and mature relationship with it.

The church was never intended to be something we consume.

It is a community in which God changes us.

As I write this, I am very much aware that I still have a long way to go to attain the “whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

I am constantly aware of—and grateful for—the church’s role in helping me become what God desires.

That’s why…

I’M STILL WORKING ON A BUILDING.

Today’s View From Above

Don’t merely ask whether you belong to a church.

Ask what you’re becoming through your life in the church.

Am I becoming more like Jesus?

Am I allowing other believers to contribute to my spiritual growth?

Am I receiving correction as well as encouragement?

Am I serving rather than merely consuming?

God isn’t finished with any of us.

The sign is still hanging:

HARD HAT AREA — BUILDING UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

And tomorrow, Pastor Warner takes us back to the construction site.

— Pastor Harold Warner