What is church?

As a church planting mission you would think that we should be able to answer this question.
We can and we can't.
This article is a start and we hope that you will continue the conversation with us on WEC's Facebook page. Have a read of this and then go to our facebook discussion at http://tinyurl.com/m6462l to continue the discussion. Or go to Facebook and search for WEC (not World Extreme Cagefighting!), and then click on 'discussions' tab. We'd like to hear what you think. 

Church: a definition

A group of believers in a specific locality who meet together regularly, are committed to knowing and obeying God as he is revealed in the Bible, help each other obey the commands of Jesus Christ, including being salt and light in their community, have a biblically and culturally appropriate structure for leadership and discipline, actively share their faith with others, and make disciples.

WEC uses the above criteria as a functional, not theological, definition of the church. It is functional because our church planters use this as a concise guide for their ministry of church planting among least-reached people. The church as depicted in the Bible is much more than this

Church: why?

Michael Frost (author of 'The Shaping of Things to Come') in a video on Youtube points out that the original 'ecclesia', the word from which we get our concept of church, was used to refer to the group of elders who would sit at the gate of each Jewish village, hear cases and make decisions for the village. The 'ecclesia' added wisdom, value and goodness to the village. If you took that group of men away, the village would be incredibly poorer.

A Turkish man picked up a newspaper off the street and saw an advertisement for a Bible correspondence course, for which he applied. In a short time he developed a relationship with his course marker and soon found himself in a gathering of followers of Jesus, singing songs, praying, worshipping. "I was amazed at the love these people had for God and each other," he said. "I have never seen this." He gave his live to Christ.

"A group of local people who follow God and who love each other will deeply impact their community in the long term," says Richard Hibbert, WEC church planter and head of mission at Sydney Missionary and Bible College.

Church: Bible verses

The following are some verses that help us to understand church. However, there is a sense in which we need to go right back to the stories of creation, the fall and the Cross to get a full picture of why the church is so important.

Matthew 16:16-19; Matthew 18:15-20; Acts 2:41-47; Acts 4:32-37; Romans 12:4-8; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 4:11-16; Ephesians 5:18-21; 1 Peter 4:10-11; Hebrews 3:13; Hebrews 10:24-25; James 5:13-14