CHURCH, WHAT IT IS & WHERE IT CAME FROM

Our challenges to understand the church are reduced when we realize that there are at least seven different meanings or uses of the term 'church' in our North American context. Church can refer to a building, an event, a policy body, a relational group, and institutionalized denomination, an organizational style, and the practice of affirming correct confessional criteria. [i] Yet church is always more than any one of these.  The true definition for church or its foundational definition begins with God himself, living among humans. God by his Spirit lives in his people, creating unique spiritual community.

Wherever these Spirit lived-in people gather to worship God and to study what He has said, they naturally develop an identity, typically give themselves a name, implement activities and structures and in that process produce distinct and varied local churches. This is church in a elementary shape. It could be enough. It might have been enough even without a name and a distinctive delivery.

The Bible does not require that churches gather into denominations or associations but it has happened. That has been an expediency and convenience for immigrant congregations and like-minded congregations to share life and support and mission. Such associations at their best have been purposeful and missional, servicing member churches. However, when member churches are not permitted to remain autonomous cooperative congregations, denominations have become questionably bureaucratic and legislative requiring compliance of member churches.

Over time it has been recognized that local congregations and even denominations have limited capacities and occasionally organizations have arisen to conduct specialized ministries to students, youth, men, women, families, marginalized people, ethnic groups. All of these will also be staffed by Spirit indwelt persons. It is the church at work.

2015 is a complex time for the church. In spite of all that is positive about these forms, the church now must learn or redefine its raison d’être (reason to be) in this evolving postmodern culture. So much of the reshaping of church in recent decades has focused upon management and organizational practices and effectiveness but the profounder realities of church may have been missed. So we have witnessed a re-emphasis on evangelism with seeker sensitive churches; underscored discipleship with the purpose driven church; demonstrated community in cell or small group life; attracted people through user-friendly approaches; filled the week with weekday ministries offering scores of entry points and even tried a strong mother ship church with niche markets to various people groups.

So much about churches today is about what they do and how they do it. The primary interest must be how we think about church, what the church is, namely, an exceptional socio-spiritual community of God's people, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to display and to explain God's redemptive presence to the world around it.

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[i] Seven meanings of 'church' and ideas for the article suggested by Craig Van Gelder, Rediscovering the Church n the Twenty-First Century;