Is it possible to ‘set up’ a church? I’m not sure.

If you ‘set up’ a church then there is immediately a sense of heirarchy, the founders and the invitees – you also immediately have other structures and practices such as a meeting place and a meeting time. I’m not sure if these things are fundamentally important to being church. I wonder how much they get in the way?

To me, church is about being friends with other people who are also part of Christ’s body. I’m tempted to think that this means I am church with whatever Christian’s I spend time with… even if they already ‘go to a church’ (how bizarre is the term ‘go to a church’?! How can one ‘go to a church’?).

I wonder if the term ‘church planting’ was first coined to overcome this problem of whether it was possible to ‘set up’ a church? The basic concept of the term ‘church planting’ is surely merely the concept of being church, mixing with brother’s and sister’s and then church emerging from that basic root.

?????