What is church?

At first I misspelled church as “chruch.” That would have had a simple answer, it is simply church misspelled. The answer to “what is church?” isn’t as simple, but Guy Muse over at the The M blog takes a stab at it with this list:

• From meeting centered to life centered.
• From church houses to house churches (simplify to multiply).
• From special priesthood to priesthood of all believers.
• From super organization to simple organism.
• From bringing people to church to bringing church to people.
• From performance by professionals to "every one of you" (1 Co.14:26).
• From program-based church to home-based church.
• From titles to function.
• From independence to inter-dependence.
• From paper membership to Body membership.
• From "us and them" to "us".
• From local vision to world vision.
• From building my kingdom to building THE kingdom.
• From wall-wide church to city-wide church.
• From Christianity to Christ (not a philosophy, movement, or religion, but JESUS!)
• From pastor only to five-fold ministries (we need ALL the gifts God gave to the church).

I’m sure some would argue against some of these and others would want to add more, but it’s a good start. If even half of them were evident in our lives, what would the world see? Interesting thought, isn’t it?