The Church, What is it?

If you are asking “what is the church?” then you aren’t part of one correctly.

When I was in college a large group in the evangelical community asked, “what is the church?” The church for many was irrelevant. The standard pastor speaking for 45 minutes, midweek bible study, and coffee hour just didn’t feel right. Just in time to ride those feelings the intellectualism of postmodern deconstructionism arrived.

A deconstruction ensued, but without a coinciding ‘reconstruction’. Churches attempted to go back to the same model as the original churches. These churches, at least in many pastors’ minds, were characterized by a more familial setting with less emphases on a lead pastor and more emphases on small groups and discussion based growth. Typically, these were called the ‘emerging churches’

 In my view it flopped into nothing more than adjusting the structure to some  ‘new’ format of Sunday morning and not anything significant in the church’s DNA. As one critic asked, “If the church is emerging now, where has it been and what is it emerging from?”

It was clear that THE church was not solely the 1.5-hour Sunday morning service. But then, what was it? Changing this to Saturday night, adding pastors for a speaking team, and adding in after service food changed nothing but the structure. So, what is church?

Here is the snarky answer: If you must ask, you aren’t part of one. If you are part of one, it is obvious, like breathing air. The global collective of believers is the gateway for heaven to earth in all aspects that heaven is better and greater than earth.

Church is when your car breaks down and Jim comes over to fix it because he is called by Christ. Church is when you take meals to the new mom because you are following the call. Church is when you pay for someone else’s Covenant eyes subscription and meet with them every week on the 7 Pillars to combat porn because you love the Lord with all your heart. Church is when you pray to bless your boss who wrecked your career because that is obedience to God. Church is when you spend 100k to add rooms to your house so you can adopt because it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Church is when you show up on Sunday morning to confess, worship, and bring offerings to the Lord as a gathering of people following the same view in an organized format.

Church is every bit of heaven we as a group bring to earth – but it is also the structure we put in place to ensure we don’t forget. Church is far less an issue of the structure and far more an issue of our own collective hearts living sacrificially as though the Lord is returning tomorrow.