Networking Church

When you ask someone if they go to church, there are a number of things that most people will immediately associate with this question. Some of these are--1)Going to church involves showing up at a building at a certain time each week 2) The church has a pastor or pastors who are paid to run the programs and make sure "church" happens 3) There are specific ministries for groups such as children, youth, men, women, etc. A couple other questions people might ask to find out about a church are--1) What style of worship does it use? 2) How many people go there? (Usually measured by how many show up on a given Sunday morning). 3) What is its doctrinal statement?

It is primarily for this reason, the baggage associated with the word "church" in the United States, that we have begun to refer to what we are doing as a network. We won't have a building that we own, when we do meet as a large group we will do things to make sure people know that it only one small part of who we are as a "church," we won't have specific programs for specific ages, and we won't determine the effectiveness of what we're doing based on how many come to a group gathering (to be more fair, many churches that measure this don't use it as their sole indicator of church health).

I believe that we will be a church, but I want to be careful how that word is used and what it might communicate. We are the church of Christ and so we will continue to be that even if we have to use some different terminology to describe it.