“Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building."
The Gathering will be structured on a multiple site format. Our main assembly each week will be a worship service held at a local school, meeting hall, or movie theatre on Sunday mornings at 11:00 AM. We will meet to worship, pray and engage scripture together. This meeting will be the open door through which those seeking to explore the faith can be connected to the church body. The venue for our gathering will be a comfortable, non-threatening environment that is familiar to almost everyone. As such, one of the barriers involved in inviting people to church can be overcome by the choice of location.
Secondary meetings in small groups, or “house churches,” will take place either on Sunday evenings or another time throughout the week. These house churches will be lead by spiritually mature small group leaders who be trained and lead by the pastor. In addition, 2 to 5 house churches will be organized into larger “service groups” which will undertake community service projects on a monthly basis. These service groups will be re-organized a few times each year to ensure interactions between multiple house churches.
The Gathering will be a church without a building. We will not seek to own property as a congregation. Renting space, and thus freeing the church from the responsibilities of ownership, can meet the needs of weekly worship. This will allow the church to redirect a large portion of its finances to compassionate ministries and missions, as well as to serve as a constant reminder that the church is not the building.