What is Church? Reflections from Your Pastors

By Pastors Tonetta Landis-Aina and Anthony Parrott

As we lead The Table Church together, we find ourselves regularly returning to fundamental questions: What is church? What are we doing here? What makes this gathering different from any other community organization? These aren't just abstract theological questions – they shape everything we do as a community.

The Divine Architecture of Church

Let's start with something foundational: Church isn't primarily our creation – it's God's. As we read in Ephesians, "God's purpose is now to show the rulers and powers in the heavens the many different varieties of his wisdom through the church." We're participating in something much larger than ourselves, something that has existed across centuries and cultures.

The church is built "on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone." There's an "is-ness" to church, as Eugene Peterson would say – a fundamental nature that remains constant whether the church is marginalized or dominant in society. As pastors, we can easily get caught up in asking, "What are we creating here?" But the truth is, we're not creating this thing – we're entering into something that already has an architecture rooted in Jesus.

Church as Fellowship of Difference

One of us (Tonetta) experienced this reality years ago in an underground church in Yemen. There, believers from all over the world gathered illegally to worship – people with very different understandings of Christianity and relationships with Jesus, all trying to hold this thing together in one room. It was awkward and beautiful and fun. That experience revealed something essential about church: it's a fellowship of difference, deeply imperfect and figuring it out along the way, but oriented toward Jesus throughout the ages.

The Three Essential Elements

Through our experiences leading churches, we've observed that church flourishes when it embodies three essential elements:

1. Deep Spiritual Friendship - Relationships that go beyond surface-level connections to true spiritual companionship
2. Spiritual Cultivation - Learning and growing together in the way of Jesus
3. Collective Liberation - Tangibly impacting lives beyond our walls

When these three elements come together, something powerful happens. We've seen it in food pantries being launched in areas of hidden need, in adoption and foster care support groups forming, and in moments of profound communal discernment where people lay their lives before friends seeking wisdom.

The Power of Marginality

It's crucial to remember that the early church began not from a position of power, but from the margins. When Jesus promised his followers would receive power in Acts 1, it wasn't the kind of power they might have expected. Instead, it was the power to speak other languages, to cross cultural boundaries, to redistribute cultural and economic power. This history reminds us that church often thrives not through dominance but through vulnerability and authentic witness.

When we talk about church decline today, we need to remember that the power we've been given is very different from dominant cultural power. The church on the margins has historically been quite powerful, and church in vulnerability helps us ask better questions about why we believe and what we're doing.

The Tension of Institution and Movement

We feel honest tension about some aspects of church. As one of our mentors once said, "Once you add money to the equation, things get messed up." We wonder about the superstructure of church we've inherited and now propagate – the budgets, the 501(c)(3) status, the professional clergy – and how far that is from the house churches of Acts.

We also worry about the consumerist mindset that can infiltrate church life. When people can easily church-shop, it can be harder to learn to love each other through disagreement. We feel particular pain around the way church relationships often dissolve when someone leaves a congregation. Are we really creating communities of authentic belonging if that belonging is contingent on formal membership?

Church as Sacred Attention

Yet despite these tensions, we experience profound beauty in church life. Some of our favorite moments come when we can simply be present to people. Church creates a unique space where we can truly ask each other, "How are you?" and expect an honest answer. It's a place where people will stop what they're doing to help someone in need, grounded in shared beliefs and practices.

This attention to one another is sacred. As writer Caspar ter Kuile suggests, prayer is like "thinking about somebody on purpose." In church, we practice this sacred attention together, believing that each person might be a "burning bush" – a place where we encounter the divine. Our faith teaches us that the burning bushes aren't just in nature's grandeur; they're in the people beside us, across from us, in the unexpected encounters and relationships we form.

The Challenge of Welcome

We recognize that people engage with church in different ways. Some folks, perhaps carrying hurts or uncertainties, need to slip in and out quietly. Others are ready for deep engagement. Some days, even we as pastors want to just sneak in and sneak out! Part of our role is creating space for all these approaches while gently inviting people into deeper community.

This dynamic isn't new – the early church also had to navigate vast differences in social status and capacity for engagement. When wealthy people and enslaved people gathered in the same space, they surely brought different needs and abilities to participate. The challenge of welcoming people exactly where they are while inviting them into more has always been part of church life.

In Conclusion

Church exists in multiple social spheres – from the public gathering of Sunday worship to the extended family of community life to the intimate connections of close spiritual friendship. What makes it church is the direction and intention: we're moving together toward Christ-likeness, toward formation in the fruit of the Spirit, toward collective liberation. And we hold the hope that even the difficult parts are being used by the Spirit to create something beautiful.

Whether you're exploring faith for the first time or have been part of church your whole life, we invite you to join us in discovering what church can be – a place of authentic belonging, prophetic witness, and transformation. We're not perfect, but we're committed to moving together toward a more beautiful expression of the gospel.

A one-sentence defition: Church is a fellowship of difference where people gather across boundaries to orient themselves toward Jesus and grow together, creating spaces of authentic belonging that exist both for the transformation of its members and the liberation of all - a divine creation we participate in rather than an institution we build.

Want to learn more about The Table? Join us any Sunday at 10am at DC Bilingual or 5pm downtown.