What is Church For?

The fall learning circle of the 2021-2022 Integration Year ended last week. Three students in the final year of their diaconal ministries studies spent a week pulling together all they’ve learned in their program and discussing the interaction between various theologies and doctrines, the impact of their global perspectives experience on their understanding of diakonia and their own ministry, and how to tell the stories of their call/vocation and how they’ve grown over the course of their studies.

One activity, in a session on ecclesiology, had the students brainstorming responses to four questions:

What was church?
What is church?
What is church for?
What does church do?

Here are some thoughts from the Integration Year students. It’s interesting how the same question asked with a slightly different focus generates different responses. You’ll see a healthy mix of optimism and realism in their answers. What are your responses to these questions from your own experience?

What was church?

a movement
social expectation
the only thing to do on Sunday
a social life
where you learn Christian traditions
a free place to learn to read
an idea
where people questioned who God was
a place of security for radicals
a social safety net
story-maker, story-keeper
a networking opportunity
judge and jury
where pain was inflicted
the only place to hear organ music

What is church?

community
tradition
a space to learn about and deepen faith within community
a lot of good intentions
a place to start grassroots movements
a place for all to find power (positive or negative)
a moral compass
a bastion of colonial racism
a political counterpoint
a nest for all ages
inward looking