Church

One question important to ask and resolve in one’s own mind: how are churches separate from the believers that comprise them?

Churches are clearly created out of gatherings of disciples.

But in some countries, a “church” is more than this: when the word “church” is used, it can refer to a legally incorporated entity, a building, a set of worship services, or some combination thereof.

The term “synergy” means an effect where the capacity of the whole (and therefore its value) is greater than the sum of its parts. There is clearly a synergy effect that makes the “church” different from “the collection of believers.”

The church is this community (ekklesia) of believers. It is ‘more’ and ‘other’ than just the disciples alone.

Still, it’s important to resolve in one’s mind that the church is the gathering of believers who do certain things as the community (e.g. Acts 2), and not any legal or material entity that the church may collectively own. The church is greater than its actions or its meeting points.

Asking these questions helps us refine our understanding of how the church in America (and other places) is actually growing or declining. The bubble-and-pop open-and-close of individual meeting points is normal in the transition of people: groups of people (e.g. towns, cities, communities) are born, age, die. The meeting points within these places can do the same thing - without their necessarily being a decline.

This bubble-and-pop is why tracking individual churches and their individual closures can be a “vanity metric” unless we understand the broader trend - is it a decline or growth in the church as a whole, or is it simply demographic functions that are affecting some parts of a country and not others. (For example, are businesses also closing?)