So what is the church today?

At Rockbridge, I am in Small Group Vision Camp, there are 142 students in this track and 17 staff that are working to train them to lead small group Bible studies on campus in the fall. This group could be influencers and leaders of over 1000 students on 12 campuses throughtout Va., N. Carolina & S. Carolina. This is a pretty significant group of influencers, right?

In my small group here we are studying 1 Peter. Last night in our discussion we were talking about living stones and foundations like buildings. So I just asked the group a question... "So what is your view of the church, anyway?

Silence.... Finally one person said "You mean like a building?"

I responded, "Well not necessarily, but what do you think the church is? Is it a building? Is it a place? Is it people?" So for the next 15 minutes we talked about what we felt like the church is and isn't. We talked about the stereotypes. What we liked and didn't like about the church.

I learned many things from this discussion. But one think that resounded there. Is a huge discrepancy between my perception of the church and these students perceptions of the church! We need to get on board and begin to do some forward thinking about this issue. Because as we continue to spend millions of dollars on our buildings our followers are comfortable just meeting at Panera Cafe or a coffeehouse or a park. It seems like the primary elements of church is worship & word with Jesus Christ in the center.

So what is the church today?