I had the privilege to serve as. youth pastor at South Shore Community Church in Sarasota, Florida for 5 where every Sunday at the end of the service, we would say together “Here at South Shore, we don’t just go to church, we are the Church!” I believe they still repeat that mantra to this day. I loved saying that every week as a reminder and have repeated it to our church a few times over the years. Here are several things I love about that statement and what it communicates.

The church isn’t a building

It’s important that you know when we talk about “going to church,” we are not saying that the building God’s people meet in is not “the church.” God’s people are His Church (1 Corinthians 12:27). In that sense, God’s people can gather in a large building, a home, under a palm tree, underground, in a barn, or wherever else for that matter and still call it a church service because wherever the people of God are gathered, that’s where the Church is.

Sunday morning is not our only duty as The Church

The statement, “we don’t just go to church, we are the Church” reminds us that as we leave the Sunday morning service, we are still the people of God. As we go into our jobs, schools, homes, gyms, etc, we are still bearing the Name of Christ and are to live as His ambassadors. We also should find ways to gather with other members of the church throughout the week because we don’t have to wait until Sunday to fellowship with one another.

“We” are the Church, not “Me”

It may seem like an insignificant difference or just semantics, but we would not say “I am the Church.” No one single Christian “is” the Church. Each of us individually are members of the body of Christ, but we need each other. The word “church” in our English Bibles is the Greek work ekklesia which in part literally means assembly or gathering. This means that one Christian in their room on Sunday morning watching the livestream is not The Church. They may be observing the Church gathering on their screen, but at that time, they are not among God’s people and therefore have not “gone to church.”

You cannot say you love Jesus and hate His bride - the Church. Some have used the statement “we don’t just go to church, we are the church” to mean that they don’t need to gather with God’s people on Sunday. But this is exactly why we did not say “we don’t go to church…” we would specifically say “we don’t just go to church…” Though sometimes the person saying it from stage would mess that part up, it was important for us to say it that way because we wanted people to know that one important aspect of being a part of the Church was to gather with the other members of the Church.

I have also heard people say things like “church doesn’t just happen in buildings. It can happen on the side of the road, and in your bedroom, and on a nature trail, etc.” But unless you’ve gathered in those places with God’s people for worship and the preaching of God’s Word, you haven’t really assembled as the Church. You may have had a time of worship with the Lord, and I’m not diminishing that. But let’s be sure not to confuse private worship with public, corporate worship. Let’s not downplay the importance of God’s people regularly gathering together to do what the Church has been doing for thousands of years.

Let’s live out the truth that “we don’t just go to church, we are the Church” by contiuing to gather with God’s people for worship, prayer, the Word, and the sacraments, and then let’s scatter as the Church to go and make disciples throughout the rest of the week.