What The Church is

The Church is two guys having coffee, talking about Jesus.

The Church is a Thanksgiving feast, free, open to anyone, with the kids running around while their parents talk to friends, eating banana pudding or pumpkin pie.

The Church is the elderly, the married couples, the single folks, the college kids, the families with kids, the children themselves.  The Church is all of them together.

The Church is a half dozen people in someone's living room gathered around a young woman who sits in a chair weeping as they pray for her healing.

The Church is a couple of hundred people in a room singing with their hands in the air.  The Church is two young girls waving flags at the front of the room, their eyes watching the words Glory and Holy ripple with each pass.  The Church is the middle-aged man in the back and the young man on whom his hand rests as he prays in tongues.

The Church is men and women serving food to whoever wants it while the bustle of another night of activities begins around them.  The Church is the one serving the food and the one taking it.  The Church is the giving and the taking.

The Church is two grown men, fathers, husbands, embracing one another, glad just to have a friend.

The Church is twenty women in someone's house sharing food and conversation.  The Church is the mothers, the grandmothers, and the childless; the single and the married; the wealthy and the poor; the beautiful and the homely; the homeowner and the visitors.  All of them.

The Church is a husband and wife, alone in their car, driving home.

The Church is at the store.  The Church is at work.  The Church is driving to the bank, and going on vacation, and sleeping in on Sunday, and taking meals to a friend who had surgery, and sharing a pint of beer with his friends, and moving furniture for a single mother, and helping a stranger tear down a fence, and giving five bucks to a panhandler, and having dinner with another family on Saturday night.  The Church is doing all of this.  The Church is you and me and all of the believers, all the time and everywhere.