church with a small c

si johnston buzzed me an e-mail to say that having had a small community going for 4 years in NI their community are going a bit more public now – see church. there are not many spaces in NI that i know of exploring christian faith in a non-institutional way. so it’s great to see this development.

pete and becca brierly are doing some stuff with them next weekend – 12 and 13 dec – if you are in that part of the world

this is how they describe their thinking about calling themselves church…

church is always spelt with a lower case ā€˜cā€™.
church is always plural and never singular.
church is not the space we mostly meet in.
church needs neither prefix nor suffix.
church is as much a verb as it is a noun.
church is, for us, an aspirational name.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. becky

    Love the definition of church here.

  2. Paul B

    like it!

  3. John

    Um, isn’t that definition pretty much the exact opposite of “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostalic church”? One: singular not plural. Catholic: univerisal [what in the ancient world probably meant ‘upper case c’ in our sense]. Apostolic [prefix]. I’m totally for missional, fresh experssions, etc., but a definition of church that almost point-by-point contradicts the Nicene Creed? Well, I wonder if there might not be a better way to put it. I do think the other parts of the definition (not the space, aspirational, verb) work well, however.

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