I'm gonna church on off to bed in a sec . . .

There's a church around here that advertises with a big banner saying "Church is a Verb." I like their theology, or what I guess to be their theology, but their semantics kill me. Okay, they're trying to say that church is something you do, not something you belong to, like a political party, or a building where you go and sit in the air conditioning for an hour. You have to BE church. Okay. I get it. But either of these semantic assumptions will only take you so far when it comes to ecclesiology. There are a lot of things you "do" that aren't verbs, like homework, your eyebrows, and press junkets. Almost nothing that you be, if you'll forgive that Elizabethan construction, is a verb. I can hang out with my friends and we can be snarky or bored, or as we might have done some years ago, we can be movie stars or dinosaurs, none of which are verbs. I'm all for affirming the importance of the laity "being church," but that at best makes church an adjective. It starts to sound like a Mad Lib, or that game Verb My Noun, Baby. "Anybody know a good place to church around here?" "The kids are out churching around behind the tool shed." Honestly, I'm slightly churched by the whole thing.

For a slightly more respectful dissection of the meanings behind the word Church, check out this quiz.

You scored as Sacrament model. Your model of the church is Sacrament. The church is the effective sign of the revelation that is the person of Jesus Christ. Christians are transformed by Christ and then become a beacon of Christ wherever they go. This model has a remarkable capacity for integrating other models of the church. Sacrament model 100% Servant Model 78% Mystical Communion Model 72% Herald Model 33% Institutional Model 11% What is your model of the church? [Dulles] created with QuizFarm.com