Storied buildings "And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you." (Matthew 10:13)
I know Jesus is talking to the twelve disciples before sending them out on their itinerant missions to the surrounding towns and villages. He told them their needs would be supplied. He later asks them at the Last Supper if it panned out as He told them. "Lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing." (Luke 22:35) But with reference to the top verse, think about it in relation to the church. To the various churches that we would frequent as we make our way through life and its stages. If the house be worthy...
"And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." (Hebrews 10:24-25)
Church is so much more than a building. So much more than a place with walls and a stage. It's so amazing to live in this late age of the earth where so many different types of people do we count as friends and acquaintances. Sure we have our jobs, whatever they may be. Our families and our leisure. But I believe now is a time like no other to revel in the ways of simple human interaction as it was exemplified and amplified by Jesus. The "assembling of ourselves together". This is church. This is worship. Whatever we do and with whomever we're led to do it is what Jesus was getting at. After getting to know and doing stuff with Him first. It takes time to lay a foundation.
"According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth therupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 3:9-10)
Jesus is the foundation (see Luke 6:47-48). Life is built upon Him and it flows from there. I know many people, myself included, who have either come to the Lord for the first time or come back to Him in the way of the Prodigal Son, who haven't found a church in which they feel at home and with whom a tangible connection is maintained in spite of distance. Who's fault is this? It's complex to be sure but if some place isn't open, believers who are hungry for more than what denomination provides will find some way to get together and live out Christian community. It's the natural order of things.
Building stories
"Again I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:19-20)
This is the seed for "church". We all have the ingredients, because of what Jesus did and does through us, to realize Christendom wherever we are. Yes, we are being led of God and this is the story He's telling, but we also get to do what we feel needs to be done. If that means building a church, so be it. It's more than likely the Lord working through you to do that. But if church for you is fellowship over dinner with the diaspora of your neighborhood, so be it.
"And when James, Cephas (Peter), and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." (Galatians 2:9) But before they went: "Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do." (verse 10)
"Him (and Her) that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God..." (Revelation 3:12)