What is Church?

What is church? Its a question that we rarely think about. We often think about practicalities, as I did yesterday about when and where and who. But what is it?

Is it church when you meet in your home with some other believers to pray together, or just to chat together, or is it only when you open the Bible together? Are home groups effectively acting as 'Little Church'? Or is it only when we all meet together?

Is church more fluid than we think of it? And are some of our terms we use unhelpful? For example sometimes we are welcomed to a time of worship -but the Bible's picture of worship is that it is all of life, it is my work, my parenting, my rest all lived to the glory of the God who made me and brought me back into relationship with him at the extravagant cost of his son.

Sometimes we are invited to stay for coffee after the service - but isn't that an essential element of the service? I'm not sure it is what the Bible sees as fellowship, as that seems to be much deeper than a quick chat over coffee and a biscuit, but it is an important part of the churches time together.

If we described it as such would it help redeem it from being a chat so often about the week past, into an opportunity to work the gospel into each others lives, to be 'devoted to the apostles teaching', to build one another up.

At a conference in London a couple of years ago the speaker spoke of the pastors job as being like the man banging on the side of the vending machine to get the coin to drop, we are to be banging the gospel deeper into each others lives. That is how we build one another up, that is what it means to be devoted to the apostles teaching. It means listening to, talking about and working the gospel deeper into each others lives, beginning with those conversations over coffee and continuing as we devote ourselves to fellowship.