What is the Church?
What is the church? To the readership of this blog, such a question might seem insultingly basic. Not so. It’s foundational. I am passionate about the revitalization of declining historic churches in New England. Answering this question will lead directly into another twin question, one that is the single watershed in whether a church will revitalize or continue in the throes of death. (That twin question, for future articles, is “Why is a church?” and “Does our governance structure support it?”). After that watershed, everything else in successful revitalization is some form of emulating “the men of Issachar” who understood the times and knew what the people of God should do.
So what is the church? What is an irreducible minimum that when we see it we can declare, “That is a church”? For Great Commission Baptists, the answer may be fairly uniform: “a church is ‘an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts” (Baptist Faith and Message, 2000). In practice, and also ecumenically, the reply might vary widely even while appealing to Scripture for support. Is it where the Word is preached and the sacraments are administered? Is it something more informally understood such as at least twenty people and some group structure? Often, whether intentionally or subconsciously, a church building and property are incorporated into the reply. Perhaps a direct reply from Scripture would be as radically minimalistic as “where two are three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).
“So what is the church? What is an irreducible minimum that when we see it we can declare, ‘That is a church’?”
Many would rely on the list of adjectives in Acts 2:40-47. This kind of definition carries a risk—by relying on examples of early church activity for a definition, the activity might be confused for the essence of what makes a church a church. For example, it is commonly argued that preaching is a singularly important component of what makes a church a church. But this can quickly be seen to cause problems. What if two or three meet underground in China and merely discuss the Word devotionally, or only pray? Is that then not a church? Or a similar difficulty could arise in the micro-church movement.
In some cases, the reply might be based on emotions. One might say, “After Covid, our church doesn’t feel like a church anymore because there are only twenty people on Sunday.” Or another might say, “We liked that church when there were only 200 people, but when it grew to 2,000, it just didn’t feel like a church should anymore.” So if size, structure, activity, and creedal definitions are imprecise, or not fully transcontextual, where can a more helpful definition be found?
“So a church is a gathering of people who are the Body of Christ. Christ is her Head, and she is his Body.”
Without delving into detailed analysis, we can say that the word translated “church” in the New Testament means, basically, a gathering of people. The effort by some to make the word a sum of its parts, and in this way arriving at “called out ones,” might be considered a linguistic fallacy. So a church is a gathering of people who are the Body of Christ. Christ is her Head, and she is his Body. This Body is a church whether gathered physically in one place, or united by nothing but the one Spirit. And this all has two key consequences: the church is a person, not a thing, and the church has a purpose greater than herself.
Since the church is a person, all other things normally associated with what makes a church a church are, at best, merely helpful aids. This list is long, and includes things such as buildings, staff, giving, attendance, membership, corporate worship on Sundays, and so forth. Since the church has a purpose greater than herself, in addition to caring for herself such that she allows herself to be beautifully prepared as a bride, she is preoccupied with fulfilling the purpose that keeps her in waiting. Consequently, what makes a church a church has nothing to do with the usual identifiers, and certainly not with getting people to church or into church activity. Instead, it has everything to do with missionality, and with a structure that makes possible the intentional pursuit of that mission.
Shawn Keener is the pastor of Brookville Bible Church in Holbrook, MA, a member of the Nimble Churches consulting team, and the author of Nimble Church.
