What is Church?

Our small group began the new year with a discussion of the question "What is church?". We acknowledged the revolving door effect. When I was part of a church staff I remember asking if anyone had ever tracked the people who had come through the door and didn't come back. There didn't seem to be any interest in tracking that number or asking those people why they moved on. I wondered if the follow-up would let people know that they did not exit without being seen and if that acknowledgment would imply that the church was about people instead of numbers.

Our past experiences had taught us that the church was more about what happens on the inside. Time and resources were used to serve themselves. We expanded that thought to acknowledge that an inward focus did nurture the people but the purpose of the nurturing was to move out and nurture others.

We discussed the purpose of Sunday morning and how that meets the needs of many people. The community "gathers and scatters." The intent is that they scatter into the community to be agents of change. While working in the church I saw some come to the point in their spiritual transformation to a place that was more about "scattering" than the "gathering." They still sought community but the focus of their faith had shifted from inward to outward. They had received so much and wanted to direct their time and energy into doing. Taking that shift in combination with the reality of how much time people actually have outside of work and family we are forced to recognize that some must move beyond the traditional models of what we call church. This is the focus of the emergent movement in many faith communities today.

We agreed that there is no one formula that is going to work for everyone. The truth is that we need a wide variety of collection points for people to gather and grow in their faith. Even the inflatable church in the picture must serve some purpose. Although for the life of me, I'm not sure what that is!