Re-defining "church" and "Church"

I’ve attempted to read Phyllis Tickle’s book “The Great Emergence”. I wish it was a bit more conversational in nature, it was too cerebral for me.

As I am beginning to prepare a series of sermons on the church, I have been thinking of two dimentions: being and doing. In that context I would suggest one addition to this definition: “a body of people delighting in God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit and dedicated to God’s mission.”

I’m an engineer, forgive me! But I suggest the “church is a tool useful to advance God’s will being done on earth as in heaven.”

Make that “dimensions.”

I am not sure about what the “right” answer should be. But I am thrilled to be able to participate in this conversation.

I also loved the book.

Dear Phyllis and Delighting Emergents,

Thank you for this conversation. For me, the Church is an opening rose, the very fragrance of Christ, especially among the poorest of the poor.
May we be the Church !

I think Phyllis Tickle’s definition is a good working one. The church is Christ’s body, those carrying out his work here on earth.

The church is that assembly of people who, in historical continuity with what has always, everywhere and at all times believed, increasingly participates in the Kingdom of God, realizing its values and even its culture on earth.

I prefer “a body of people delighting in the mystery of God”. We cannot define the ineffable quality of God. Even our concept of the Triune God is inadequate.
Don

I too liked the definition as it is beginning. We believers forget to “delight” in the Lord. We are very good at wishing others sins are pointed out so they can change!

Phyllis, I would add to your wonderful definition ‘in the context of where they live and work.’ I say that because having been in a small town for 8 plus years, I think that it is a different context than suburbia and what ‘works’ there does not often work here.

Thanks for the invitation! I like the practical as well as the inspirational. I believe this definition opens the way to a self-check: “am I participating in the church?”

DEVOTED FOLLOWERS OF JESUS UPHOLDING ONE ANOTHER, IN RELATIONSHIP AND IN GATHERINGS, IN THE WAYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, WHERE JESUS IS KING.

church: The bumbling incarnation of God’s “Yes.”

The Church is the ekklesia. It is the set apart, called out assembly of God. Specifically, it is an assembly of those who have been called out of darkness and into new life in Christ.

The ekklesia assembles to revel in that joyous mystery. To share that mystery with others in both word and deed. To praise the orchestrator of that mystery.

Donovan, I love what you’ve added here.

I rarely use pronouns for God, because the minute we begin to define God, we begin to miss out on something. The image of God as father is useful, but not one I want to be wedded to in my very definition of what it means to be His child.

My initial reaction to Phyllis’ definition was that seems to enshrine the gender of God. My next thought was uh-oh, that there will be people who take the contrasting position. I have dear friends and colleagues who are invested in the idea of God as (male) father, and I wouldn’t want to deny their vision, either.

I think we sometimes want our definitions to include everything that we are, so any one we can agree on is bound to seem weak. But it’s a modern (old-fashioned) strategy to want definitions of that sort. What we’re after, I suspect, is a vision of who we are, rather than a set of propositions that all fall nicely into place.

I am more and more enjoying the small-c church definitions that I’ve run across, which say something like “We are a body of people who has found a path to God through Jesus Christ.”

Great conversation! May I contribute a free-form poem I composed on this subject:

Ekklesia

A people
gathered by the Father,
redeemed by the Son, and
indwelt by the Spirit;
called to be
the Father’s worshiping community,
the Son’s devoted followers, and
the Spirit’s new creation;
and to go
in the love of the Father,
by the command of the Son, and
with the power of the Spirit;
on a mission from God
to declare the praises of the Father,
to proclaim freedom in the Son, and
to release captives by the Spirit
in a broken world.

So help us, Holy Father!
So help us, Holy Son!
So help us, Holy Spirit!
Holy! Holy! Holy!

How about “a body of people delighting in being made Christ-like”?
I like “delighting” a lot, but I’m not as touched by the Father, Son, Spirit declaration – not because it’s wrong, but because it sounds like credo rather than transformative community. “Christ-like” focuses on our Example, who leads directly to love, community and mission, rather than faith in abstraction.
(BTW, my church’s mission statement is “Growing relationships with God, self, and others.”)

George Fox the founder of Quakerism told 17th century England the church was not a building but the people in whose hearts Christ dwelt by faith, and that no piece of ground was any more sacred than the other. Jesus prayed for his followers to be in the world but not of the world. It seems to me we have done just the opposite and set up sacred space apart from the world where only the so called holy dare enter. I see the emerging church breaking through those walls and barriers built by centuries of tradition and theology, and once again becoming a force in the world rather than a fortress. And in that frame of mind, church happens – where two or three are gathered together, or when we feed the hungry or clothe the naked or shelter the homeless, or take care of the hurting, or in any other way bring the kingdom values to bear on this world. Then church isn’t a place we go, it’s a thing we do 24/7 so that God’s kingdom does come and his will is done “on earth as in heaven.”

I tend to think of “church” as: a worshipping community on a mission.

This “defintion” works for me. It calls to mind the great gathering of God’s peple before the throne in Revelation 4 and 5. The signts, sounds, and the presence of the triune God enrich the idea of “delighting” as a mysterious spiritual/theological/eternal encounter.

I like the feel of C/church as a “body of people delighting…” because it moves away from trying to define C/church on the basis of it’s attributes, and instead looks at how one might recognize C/church through it’s actions and attitudes. (I think that’s what you mean when you say it has “predication.”)

In my own thinking, I’ve begun to look for C/church as the body that, because of it’s delight in it’s relationship with the God revealed in Jesus, lives into three outcomes:

Growth of individuals into Christlikeness,

Growth of the C/church body itself (deeper in relationship among members, wider in drawing more into the body), and

Growth of the Kingdom beyond the C/church (as seen in justice, mercy, kindness, abundance etc. for all.)

To me, that expression provides the necessary specificity by linking C/church directly to Jesus, while also allowing for enormous diversity of belief and practice around him as the center.

If we look to the vision of the ‘Holy City coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband,’ Rev. 21, perhaps we can find a definition of the C/church that includes the past, present and future efforts to fulfill this vision. Is the C/church not a body of people in preparation for an eternal wedding? If we thought of the C/church in this way perhaps we could humbly conclude that the C/church is not yet married to the Christ in whom the C/church delights but the C/church is a people preparing for that eternal goal.

I am not sure of my contribution or even my observation, but here it is.
I know in my heart and mind what my definition is of “church” and “CHURCH”, but to put it in words is beyond my ability. I also find that every entry in this blog is similar to my own, but not quite. It does make it apparent that our God in one, and many just by the individual definitions given here. Thank you Phyllis for getting us started, for Mike’s free form poem that has struck an “aha!” in me, and I look forward to the coming year and this continuing conversation.

Tony,
“Thee” is and “thou” are the church.
Don

Enjoying the journey of listening to this conversation. Not sure that anything I may think about the 2 churches would fit, but the older I become the more I am drawn away from the one and back to the other. I am drawn away from the “church as the body delighting’ because so often we do not. Drawn back to the Church of the brick and mortar, the sense of awe and holiness I once found inside dark paneled walls,vaguely lit by candlelite. It was there that I sensed Him there in the Holy of Holys… me as the church on a kneeling rail, and He the great I am surrounding me with such love. Me delighting in Him and He in me! Church and church becoming one.

According to my research, the word
“church” was not even in use at the time the Gospels were written. It is Euorpean in origin, and has always been assocated with a building. The Gk. word used for what Jesus would build was ekklesia. This was the Gk. word used to translate the Hebrew phrase for the called out people of God (Israel)in the Septuagint. Jews of the time would have been familiar with this word as referring to the set- apart PEOPLE
of God. The Body of Christ has managed to assimilate “ecumenical,” “agape” “eucharist” and other terms. I, for one, am going to be part of Jesus’ Ekklesia.

Those who have gathered (both physically and spiritually) to learn, share, confess, praise, and receive forgiveness—and then are sent into the world to do likewise.

I love the definition of church a friend told me :: church is a group of Christ followers being the body of Christ to their sphere of influence.

I think we must always follow the Bible scriptually and go out and tell everyone the “good news of Jesus’s salvation thru Grace from our sinful fleshly ways”. Most people are blinded to the one and only absolute truth as given to us from God in the Bible and we need to save them from eternity in hell. Jesus is the one and only way…..the Way, the Truth and the Life. We should yell it from the mountain tops.

We must remember 2 Timothy 4:4-5
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

I am afraid McLaren and others are falling into this….......

Jesus lover i once thought the same way as you did….but when i read what these brothers and sisters are talking about and check it with the bible i seen they are talking the truth…i love talking about the kingdom of God and how the church can start living as christ lived..instead of calling somebody a false teacher…bless you in the name of Jesus…love u

Along with God among us, two or three gathering, and loving our neighbor as ourselves, there is a physical component to church which is important. As God’s creation, part of our delight (and inescapable reality) is that we take up space and have stuff.

After reading a few of the comments, I think most people are on the same page. The church is a people. Neither a time, nor place, nor event, but actual people. It is a similar statement when you say Christ is the Head of the Church. I think church is also our language for kingdom. The church is the kingdom (or should be). A saying that I’ve heard a few times describes this, “Church is not on Sunday. Church is Monday through Saturday. What you do then is the Church. The Sunday thing is merely resting.”

I’ve thought for a long time that we Christians must redefine church. Perhaps a reinvention is a term more appropriate. I’m new to this discussion and have yet to read Phyllis’ book but have it on order. However I do believe it’s time for us to break out of the traditional boundaries and become more real.

Phillis, I like your definition. I guess for me the word “community” goes a long way. The “community” of Christ, whether we are meeting together at the moment, or in groups of 2 or 3, or are all individually at rest, work, play or worship, not interacting with each other. Right now, I’m not specifically connected to any particular local church body, and do long for some more fellowship and interaction with the community, but have found the church “structures’ I’m familiar to be a huge stumbling block to both worship and community at this point. I wish I had realized the recent emergent event was taking place in Memphis before it was almost over! I live in Memphis, and would love to get connected to others who are also searching for this community in Christ beyond the strongly defined expressions of it that predominate here in the “Bible Belt.” I’d love to hear from some of you!

Robyn

Phillis, I thought your little book was great, an easy read, and likely something I’ll share with my congregation.

Like the others, I want to push the way we engage the Trinitarian Formula, and like you I think it is essential to understanding Christianity. If Christianity is a particular theospiritual stream/community, then it’s traditional language matters. This is not because God is gendered, but because Christianity is trying to say something specific about God. We need a language and some traditions for that.

Thanks for tossing the potato.

Thank you all…very stimulating conversation.

It is strange listening in so to speak to you folks across the pond – I guess I’m very much with Robyn in feeling the ‘modern structures’ with their ‘pre modern language’ are stifling.

I work as a business improvement coach and would wish to offer a framework for the ensuing discussion which I often use in helping my business colleagues in taking the next steps.

In order to define what we are (and consequently how we go about being that thing) we need a firm grasp on the desired outcome, lest our ‘defining’ becomes an unintended prison from which we spend the next few years extricating ourselves – what kind of a definition would lead to us taking forward the ministry of reconcilliation that Paul spoke about, and how will it give us the freedom to be truely part of our host communities through incarnational mission

Gareth

I love the idea of delighting in God, but agree with one who observed that so often as Christians we do not delight in God. I see church as serving as the hands and feet of Christ here on earth with and to those around us. Church becomes a collective of like minded people desiring to follow and emulate Christ’s teachings.

Joan Chittister, in her wonderful book In Search of Belief says: ”... we have to forget one kind of church and recommit ourselves to the creation of the other one, the one created by the Holy Spirit, rather than the one created by centuries of political accretions and clerical control.” My personal sense is that we need to acknowledge that there will always be church in terms of the Christian human collective expressing faith in word and action. The key, I suspect, is for the Christian human collective to maintain our relationship with God in such a vital and abundant manner that Church, the creation of the Spirit, continually informs and transforms church.

I love it when I see my bro’s n’ sis’s thinking and speaking and seeking more of Jesus. It truly gives me goosebumps. The one thing I think I will offer is that we are careful. The C/church is truly on a mission. We are truly the called out ones. We truly are community. But I for one, as much as I wish I could hope to do it, do not always “delight” in the Lord (Father, Son and/or Holy Spirit) HOWEVER I am always called to worship and lift Him up. I remain…InHISgrip, Pastor John

I take Phyllis’ article as my inspiration and offer: An Event that transcends time and space; past, present and future, the here and the not yet; that is solely dependant on the act of the trinity for it’s existence.

The church is the virtual and vital reality of all who/that believes in God the Father, Jesus the son and the Holy spirit – whose complete wellbeing and delight is dependant solely on the trinity.

Great article by Phillis Tickle. Every sacred doctrine of the Church should be revisited often and moved forward because we are dealing with eternal matters that only God can fully understand. I think He enjoys updating our little minds so we can catch up with our redeemed hearts.

To me the word “Church” means, “The RV of the Holy Spirit”. RV are never meant to be stationary but capable of being moved forward. The Church is the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. He is the One who decides where to move to and when. This RV has no reverse gear. It presses on in the will and revelation of God the Father for each generation. This revelation of Him is so vast that the RV has unlimited mileage and an ever changing structure but a goal setting apparatus that never changes.

Five years ago I would have found it surprising to be wrestling with this idea of what the church is. Life experiences have taken me from long-standing participation in local church bodies with a clear idea of what church is, to a place of deep re-evaluation of what that means. Some of my wrestling came from beginning to question the assumptions of the mega-church dream we (the American church) adopted in the late 80’s and 90’s. What began as a desire to address cultural barriers to people hearing of Christ morphed into huge budgets turned inward to maintenance of programs and buildings. I’ve been a part of established churches along with both successful and struggling church-plants or start-ups. I’ve experienced deep relationships in church fellowship as well as the unwanted severing of those relationships. I have also watched others who began to question the mainstream assumptions of what church is ousted from fellowship. What has been the biggest constant in all these changes has been that deep relationships grounded in ‘delighting in’ Christ in practical living seem to cross boundaries and last in spite of difficulties.

Out of this journey I find my deepest desire is to be a part of a community that desires to live out what Christ taught and modeled. Where questions can be asked honestly and discussed, and yet be challenged in practical ways to really examine what it means to follow Jesus Christ and honor our Creator with our lives. Exactly how that community is structured has become far less important than whether or not it is engaged in and striving toward honoring Christ in how the community lives every day – individually and collectively. I find I prefer informal or simple surroundings for gathering and worshipping as much because I’m not sure it is the best stewardship of what God’s entrusted to us to amass large facilities that can then turn and bind us.

So, how would I define what ‘church’ is? When I heard that ekklesia was first a political term designating a community or city that now followed the lead of Ceasar’s rule and law it really struck me. By this, the choice to use that term by the early followers of Christ would imply an identifiable community that chooses to follow the lead of the Lord Jesus (as opposed to Ceasar), living by the values and culture of Christ’s kingdom. This image implies for me a deliberate choice of both who to follow and with whom we live out that community, but is not first an organized gathering. It goes beyond a specific meeting, and embraces all facets of daily life, whether we know each other personally or not, whatever we find ourselves engaged in. When we gather, it would be to celebrate and learn and encourage each other.

This would include Phyllis’s idea a ‘body of people delighting in’ who God is, but also more strongly embraces the action part of living that delight in both our ekklesia fellowship and in our larger community as participants in God’s Kingdom on earth. When I delight in music, music spills naturally through my life; when I delight in friendship, cultivation of friendship spills naturally in and through my actions. When we delight in God and his Kingdom, it seems living out that Kingdom would spill naturally out through the very pores of our lives to infect our very community with his love and goodness.

This is not a concise definition (actually longer than I expected!), but I know I’m not finished thinking about it – working out how to live it. My 2 cents for now.

If we are re-defining, then perhaps we should have two threads of discussion: (1) what IS c/Church and (2) what should or could be c/Church.

(1) Historically, this has not been the most inspiring group of people! But they are the c/Church nonetheless. By including words like “delighting” we are excluding many (too many, sadly!). Perhaps “delighting” is for the second thread…

(2) I agree with others that the Trinity inclusion does not fit me quite right – the over-emphasis on Western TRInity doesn’t fit my understanding of God very well (or y’all might say I over-emphasize the triUNITY aspect of the word).

My opinion: c/Church is the sum of those who are Christian. Thus, I’d suggest that the re-defining that needs to come before this discussion is the re-defining of “Christian.” I don’t suppose that’s near as desirable/fun as c/Church plus it seems to jump into the standing-war in Western, Christian theologies (see #30 and #31 above!!).

[Not so much content as observation],
David

The semantical hop-scotch on this post is mind-numbing. Let me add another hop…where does Pentecost and the birthday of the church fit into the conversation? Isn’t “the body of people delighting in God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit” seen most fully in the Pentecost experience.

When I was a small child my parents taught me that the church was “God’s house.”

Much water under the bridge later and I think it’s not a bad way of looking at it…for me, the church is where God lives.

Nice definition Friar Matt M and also Tony. And thanks Mark Long for the Chittister quote, which is excellent!!

So many great things were said above.

If the Kingdom of God is in other words God’s dream for all creation, then the C/church is (should be) a signpost on the journey toward the fulfillment of that dream.

And the C/church listens and moves in harmony with the great Dream-Realizer, God’s Spirit that Jesus promised us all.

So the C/church is/are Dream-Realizers, bringing God’s dream (heaven on earth, our real selves, our real home) to reality in small and large ways wherever we find ourselves, and on behalf of all of creation.

And we can recognize the signs of this Great Dream, when we see wholeness created, forgiveness given, hope restored, joy shared, fear broken, resources shared, people taken care of, and the like.

More fodder for this conversation: “It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me.” Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister

Thanks Phyllis for your insight and for opening this discussion. While reading Luke 16:8 this week I noticed Jesus’ quote “for the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” I believe this passage affirms Phyliss’s proposed definition – the church is the people of de Light.

The responses here seem to focus on the identity and on the mission of the people who make up the C/church.
Throughout history, God has chosen individuals and groups of people who delight in Him to carry out His mission in the world. What seems to be different is the way they are organized (nations, lineages, tribes, etc). Much of what Jesus had to say about how God’s people related to one another had to do with organizational process. In addressing Phyliss’s proposed definition, I believe more focus is required on the first phrase, “a body of people”. In our globalized world, I would propose amending Phyliss’s definition to “a network of people delighting . . .”

Several people have sighted the importance of community in the definition and over time I have been a part of two or three really good Christian communities, but the common factor has been the exclusivity that ‘Christian’ communities seem to straightjacket themselves with. Is this because we essentially ignore the image of the maker in those ‘outside’ our community (for surely that is why they remain out there?) and is it because our dishonesty about our actual daily experience of being a part of the church leaves us vulnerable to crippling self doubt when faced with the ‘wider’ community.

When the Spirit came at Pentecost it drove the embrionic church out in to THE community of those loved by God – I for one wish we had never gone back!!

Lets live the dream out there among our NEIGHBOURS loving them as we do ourselves.

Gareth

as i continue to wrestle with what the church is or is to be, i can’t get away from the reality that the church is not just the people, or just a gathering of people, but a covenant community bound together by God in the pursuit of Christ and His kingdom…
which has lead me to understand the church as: the community of those called together by God to seek, honor and follow Christ, for the glory of God and the sake of the world.

I am eternally uplifted by the wealth of competent definitions that have evolved as a result of this post. I’ll be thinking about these for weeks.

It is amazing how the body of Christ can be so diverse, so active, and so inexplicable that in trying to find new ways to describe that body we only expose further the mystery of God and his creation.

Thanks Phyllis!

Whilst “conversation” may be stimulating to the creative ego, we should not neglect the fact that nobody defines the Lord YHWH better than himself, and that he does so through revelation from his Spirit and his Holy Word, which was made living in the man Christ Jesus. So, to turn the discussion back toward YHWH’s own definitions:

Jesus: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
...
Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”
...
Jesus:”On this rock I will build my CHURCH, and the gates of Hades shall not overcome it.”
...
“The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later.”
...
“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
...
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
...
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Wow, what great conversation this topic always seems to be. There is no doubt from the posts that a lot of time has been spent pondering how to define who we are collectively in Christ. Without putting my definition in the jar at this time, I’d rather put in a thought. I think (though it may seem trivial) we may be doing harm by asking the wrong question. The question is NOT how we RE-define the church. Rather it should be “what is the TRUE definition of the church?” It has to do with the way we approach scripture. Oue goal should not be to be to define so mauch as it should be to discover. Simply because it’s not our truth. We are like people setting out to discover a treasure. The definition of church has already been made by the One who created it. Soooo…What does God say the church is?
One other point I’d like to put out there is that, though it seems unpopular at times to consider the shape of the “traditional” church, we need to remember that there is only and will only be ONE true church. That church has been in existence for thousands of years. Founded by the Holy Sprit through a few devoted humble servants of God. Therefore, we are a part of every phase and generation of that ONE church throughout history. We cannot see ourselves as an isolated new creation. We must understand that everything God has been doing through history has brought to where we are now.
-Blessings

The definition is too limiting and too male dominant. May we add
God the Mother
God the Creator
God the Redeemer
God Who is Mystery
God Who is Wonder
God the Lover
God Who is Wisdom?
If we are going to play and delight in The Word present now and before Creation and forever, let’s not limit our playmates!!
cheers
gary

What a very long, interesting, and thought-provoking discussion. I especially like the entry from Tony, #18. The church/Church is not a place but the space in which God’s people are in action on, for a lack of a better pronoun, His behalf. These conversations make me long for finding this type of faith community in my area which takes on this search earnestly.
Thank you for the blessing of being part of this conversation.

THE CHURCH HAS BEEN, IS, AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE THE BODY OF CHRIST. AMEN.

Church or, as it is for many here in Scotland, kirk is derived from kyriakos meaning that which belongs to the Lord. It is a body, a kingdom, a movement, a group of disciples and much, much more.
I love the “Bride of Christ” imagery for the church. It takes me back to standing waiting for my bride to come to our wedding. The sense of pride and wonder and joy I had as she came up the aisle to be joined to me in marriage was overwhelming. She wasn’t perfect, and still isn’t, but then neither am I. That was nearly 14 years ago, and I love my wife as much now, if not more, than I did then.
This is how Jesus views the C/church. Not perfect (yet), but still his bride and a source of joy and pride to him.

How about this to help us think outside the box. I once heard John Stott give this POV about the church. “The only institution that exists for the benefit of it’s non-members”

“a body of people delighting” – so simple, so deep. Reminds me of the weightlessness of the Westminster Shorter Catechism…glorify God…enjoy him forever. I think I can do the “delighting w/ others”.