Do Church?

When it comes to talking about the Church, fewer things that bother me more than the phrase, "Do Church". Typically it's in the context of the question, "How do you do church?" Also, "When do you do church?"

Why does this phrase bother me so much? It's because it betrays a lack of understanding what the church is. When someone says "do church" they thing of the church as something that is fundamentally outside themselves. They are necessarily thinking of the church as an organization. In my opinion, to think of the Church as primarily an organization may be the greatest flaw in American theology.

When we think of the Church as primarily an organization, we are changing the very definition that is found in Scripture. The Church is  the ekklesia, or called out ones. There are other metaphors used such as body and family. The one thing that the Church is not, an organization. It is not a club or a civic group. It's something wholly different from these things.

The way that we see the Scriptures most clearly refer to the Church is that of "people". This is highlighted in 1 Peter 2:10, "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." God is at work making for himself "a people".

Here's a little a test that you can use to see if you're thinking about the Church properly. Simply replace the word "church" with "a people" or "people" or "God's people".  Just try it with the questions in the first paragraph, you'll see what I mean.