We often get asked, ‘are we a church?’. The short answer is yes, absolutely. The longer answer is: what did you mean when you asked the question? Some of us grew up with a very object-based definition of church. It’s somewhere you went…and usually on a Sunday. Or it was ‘that building on the corner’.

While we understand how we’ve ended up referring to buildings as churches this isn’t at all ‘the church’ that Jesus left behind in the New Testament. Church is, and always will be, unique groups of people gathering together and scattering apart on mission. We gather together in a bunch of different contexts to worship God, to deepen our relationship with Jesus, live out our faith together, be shaped by His Word and share the good news of Jesus through living our ordinary lives together in community.

In short, church is a ‘who’ not a ‘what’—it’s not a place, it’s a people. Jesus refers to His Church (the big ‘C’ referring to all churches across the globe) as His Bride. And while the Bride’s dress has been sullied and torn over the centuries it hasn’t changed the mission of Jesus to use broken people like us to build His Church through sharing the good news. Yep, we’re a church. We sing, we preach, we give, we enjoy communion together, we baptise folk and we do the long journey with Jesus alongside each other.

So, while we revel in the weekend gatherings of The Big Table, we place a high value on the times through the week when we share life together—meals, conversations, emails and experiences. And we seek to do all of this for the glory of God.