What is (a?) Church?
Let's try to un-confuse ourselves.
I generally loathe engaging in purely theoretical conversations, but I’m deeply passionate about how ideas impact people’s lives. In our world today, there’s no shortage of brilliant ideas—and, unfortunately, an abundance of astonishingly terrible ones.
I remember in the early days of our church, a local congregation publicly denounced us as illegitimate because we didn’t adhere to their specific theology of church governance. This accusation, and hundreds of similar such conversations, forced me to confront one of the most important questions we’ve wrestled with over the last 15 years: What is church?
The question, “What is church?” didn’t arise from abstract theological debate; it was born out of genuine confusion among the students we disciple on university campuses. Questions like these kept coming up:
What distinguishes a small house church from a discipleship group?
Why isn’t a discipleship group considered a church?
Is a local men’s group discussing business and faith a church? Why or why not?
These questions have really practical implications.
For example, there’s a general consensus—at least in my experience—that someone should belong to only one church at a time. This makes sense; otherwise, concepts like spiritual authority, church discipline, tithing, multiplication, leadership development or covenant family really don’t make any sense. You can only do those things in one place at a time.
Yet there’s often no assumed issue with belonging to multiple discipleship ministries alongside attending a church, even when those ministries have widely varied or even contradictory theology. This distinction between churches and discipleship ministries has always struck me as odd.
Herein lies a critical problem: discipleship and evangelism have been outsourced from the context of the local church. However, scripturally speaking, this is a completely foreign concept.
As presented in the New Testament, the church is the result of discipleship and evangelism.
This brings us to a key insight: discipleship and evangelism are not the overflow of the church; rather, the church is the overflow of discipleship and evangelism. The order matters.
This is why Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations, not to plant churches.
What makes a church a church is not its governance or the inclusion of sacraments—though both are important. Instead, the essence of a church is rooted in something much deeper and more relational - it is a result of discipleship.
Wherever serious discipleship and evangelism take root, there’s a natural and inevitable impetus to function as a church.
Why does this matter? If we shift our mental model of church from being institutional to being more aligned with the New Testament as a product of discipleship and evangelism, we can experience the following benefits:
More churches: The multiplication of smaller, agile, and mission-focused churches.
Engaged members: Churches that involve the entire body in the work of multiplication—no more people sitting on the sidelines.
Affordable church planting: A model that prioritizes discipleship and evangelism from the start, reducing costs and barriers by allowing a slower, more organic approach.
Resilience to leadership transitions: Churches where everyone contributes, not just a select few leaders.
Independence from government influence: Churches that are not beholden to shifting political winds.
Robustness in adversity: Churches capable of thriving despite persecution, setbacks, policy changes or…pandemics.
If this sounds overstated, I’d encourage you to research co-vocational disciple-making movements in places like China, India, Cuba, Thailand, and beyond. These movements are living proof of what happens when discipleship and evangelism take precedence over institutional structures.
So, what is a church? I’ll share more about how we’ve arrived at our understanding in the coming weeks, but here’s our working definition (as outlined in Everyone Sent):
A church is a committed group of disciples who are devoted to:
The Lordship of Christ
Each other as family
The Scriptures
The mission to make disciples
Why these four commitments? I’ve written and spoken extensively about these over the years, and I’ll dive deeper into them in upcoming posts. Stay tuned.
Finally, a shout-out to the team at Tampa Underground, who pioneered the concept (as far as I know) of an “ecclesial minimum.” We’ve adapted and refined their ideas to fit our context and unique convictions, but their work has been foundational to our thinking.