How should a church speak about “the church is not a building” without denying the need for the church’s gathering place?

Scripture teaches that the church is a people, not bricks and mortar. Yet a people must still gather, and gathering requires a location. In ordinary life, outdoor meetings are often limited by weather, noise, and distractions, so a building becomes a practical servant of the congregation’s shared life.

In that sense, buildings are not the essence of the church, but they are frequently the means by which the church’s embodied fellowship becomes stable and credible in a community. As the article observes, “often the wider community won’t take you very seriously until you have a building to meet in” (Sims, “12 Theses on Church Buildings,” 2026).

A church is not a building, but because it must gather, it must take space seriously.

Related Material

• Rejecting Gimmicks for Genuine Worship Experiences — pushes the gathering toward Scripture-centered worship rather than attractional techniques
• The Tie that Binds: Church Counters Isolation — frames embodied church life as an antidote to modern isolation and individualism
• Embracing Church For True Christian Growth — argues that long-term Christian growth depends on committed church attachment, not spiritual soloing

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Source: 12 Theses on Church Buildings

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