Recently, I was in a gym competition that went as follows: you had to burn a minimum of 3500 calories a week to stay in the competition, and at the end of four weeks, the person that burned the most wins the pot. Everybody had to put $20 bucks each in to participate.
I ended up coming in second, but the guy that came in first still had the gym owner give me $20. I thought that was really cool of that guy.
This further strengthened my perspective that the gym is the real Church. I am not talking about some commercially pumped up, corporate gym, but this small gym, in the middle of a field, that use to be a two story house. Truly, it is a Church!
Likewise, I see what George has created here is a Church. The people make the Church. The people are the structure, and what builds around them is because of them, but not the spirit itself.
The word Ecclesia as relates to The New Testament is a gathering of "Christ Followers"...not a gathering of Christ Followers and Non-Christ Followers. The modernist coroporate/worldly "church" embraces the idea of a gathering of Christ Followers and Non-Christ Followers. In essence these "churhes" starve the sheep for the sake of the goats" and you can see this played out in the seeker friendly movement with many of the compromised mega "churches" such as the corrupt Hillsong, Elevation, Bethel, etc. All this assumes the discussion is related to Biblical Christ Followers and NOT Mormons, JWs and The Roman anti-Christ Catholic Paganistic "religions"
You hit it on the head Turbanhead! So much to write about the word "church", which is actually derived from the word "circe". "Cathedral" means "the place of the seat", and so it too does not represent what the word in the Bible is.
The biblical word is "ecclesia". No where in the bible is the word "church", except after the King James version. Ecclesia is rich and thick, but a good summary is gathering, fellowship, a called out assembly of PEOPLE. It has nothing to do with a place or a building, and was never intended to. In the book of Acts, believers met in homes almost exclusively.
Much more to say on that, but that is the central core, so a hearty Amen!