What is Church Anyway?

What is Church Anyway?

I bet you think of a building, don’t ya? Or, maybe a congregation of people in that building? Think of it this way: If Jesus had in mind what you and I think church is, would it not make sense that He would have spent His time on earth doing things other than just hanging out with people???

Seriously folks! What about believers in other parts of the world, what about those in other centuries? Are they condemned because they didn’t dress up many times a week and go to a building for services and prayer meetings?

Might I posit the obvious: Our understanding of church needs work!

Church is Christ-followers living out their faith together (key word there!) which sometimes and occasionally includes corporate activities. Corporate activities are vital to church; they are not, however, most of what we do.

Neither, I might add, is small groups church… altogether. “Small groups,” in and of itself can be just a smaller corporate meeting. “Small groups” is “Community Lab.” I see it as a place where we learn to live out our faith and practice it safely in a hospitable environment (i.e., community).

Which idea of church are you living out? Is church a lifestyle – constantly relational for the purpose of building God’s Kingdom? (I know church staff people that are too busy with church work to do that!!!) Or is your idea of church something else? Something that is not congruent with the life of Christ we read about in the Gospels?

Improvement on our ideas is what I’m after here, not a change in behavior. That will come when our ideas change.

Read the Gospels.