Church Chat

You said "church!" Isn't that special...

I've been out of town the last few days. I've been working on using words other than "church" to describe the gathering of believers in a building on Sunday. It ain't easy. On Saturday I asked my sister if she was going to ch... uh, service on Sunday morning.

It's like a diet of the tongue. Why is it so hard?

Could it be...SATAN??????

Really, this exercise is very revealing to me, trying to find other words to describe our assembling together. I'm finding that, during the second I am scrambling for a word, I'm sorting through images I don't want to portray...exclusive club, elite think tank, support group, etc. I don't believe "church" is a club, but I'm realizing that I expect my listener to assume a lot when I use "church" to describe our gathering. "Church" out of my mouth may equate to a number of organizations, affiliations, or clubs that are associated by a common paradigm that may or may not be Christian.

This disturbs me. As one who loves Jesus Christ and embraces biblical teaching, I believe good communication is imperative. (I'm not the best at it, but I value it highly.)

We have a motto in our fellowship, "Being the church for the sake of the world." It hangs on the wall of the lobby of our "place of worship." I receive that motto as my mission statement for how I conduct my relationships outside that building seven days a week. But, what are we "being" when we are assembled together? We are the church, right?...the gathered, the worshipers, the listeners, the servers, the preachers, the teachers, the family of God. I tend to forget, when I attend Sunday gatherings, that I am not an audience. This isn't a comedy club or a lecture I'm attending. My presence in the midst of others gathered together to worship God is dynamic and powerful. What do we call that? If not church?

Church, of course, in the non-building/organization sense of the word.

I need a new language.