In the next month we will be taking step to purchase a considerable amount of audio and visual equipment. This is tough because it is expensive.

On one hand we don’t want to waste money but we don’t want to purchase low quality equipment that will break and burn out or purchase equipment that we will hopefully outgrow. Meaning a microphone and a boom box only gets you so far.

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We have already started 3 neighborhood gatherings and hopefully start another in the next week! Neighborhood gatherings are simply getting our friends together to explore spiritual truths. It isn’t a formal process but something we encourage one another to initiate naturally so that we can create casual environments to explores spiritual truths with our friends.

Our hope is that neighborhood gatherings would take place throughout the city.

Well, it isn’t just to have another church. There are plenty of churches, but our thought was that when Jesus spoke creation into existence and then stepped out of the heavenly realms and entered into human history that perhaps he intended more for us then just showing up on Sundays at 10:30 am.

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“Where do you meet?” Is a question we get all the time and it is something we are constantly praying about. Our desire isn’t to put money into a building but to find a place to meet that is affordable and also meets our needs for a Sunday gathering. The above picture is one of the locations we are looking it. We met with the owner today and discussed the possibility of using his space on a Sunday morning for an affordable price. We are still thinking through the details but this is a possibility.

There have been a number of articles I have read recently:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/03/09/daily9.html?ana=e_du_pub

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2009/01/state-of-church-planting.html

It seems to be a common conclusion that the spiritual landscape in the United States is changing. There is a thought that Christianity is moving from majority to minority, settlers to sojourners, and maintenance to mission.

Often times when I talk to people about Jesus they refer to the church and when they reference the church they perceive it as an institution. They seem to perceive the church as over organized, impersonal, hierarchy that is more focused on promoting a common mantra or doctrine than genuinely exploring spiritual discussion.

As a result, people are stepping away from church and sometimes Jesus and looking for spiritual insight in other measures. Today it isn’t difficult to find other avenues for spiritual insight. There are blogs, podcasts, books, sermons, translations, commentaries, and other forms of content that provide enough fodder for anyone to spend years sifting through. Therefore, what is the purpose of the church? Is it possible to still gather as a church body without becoming an institution? When does a church become an institution?