How do you define "church"?

The "Faith in Action" campaign brings this question to light.

This campaign cancels the Sunday service (something many people equate to mean "church") to have members engage in service in their community during that day.

Faith in Action is a four-week, church-wide campaign that has the goal of developing an outward focus and service heart among the participants in a local church. The culmination is a Sunday where regular services are canceled, and the entire congregation engages in service projects in and with their community.

This campaign includes 29-day devotionals that church participants can do on their own at home, 4 weeks worth of small groups, 4 sermons/services - all aimed at calling the local church's hearts to action in their community. Then the last week of the campaign is when the worship service is replaced by a day of community service followed by an evening celebration.

This campaign was developed by a collaborative effort between Outreach Inc. and World Vision. It's been run so that there is an annual campaign that encourages churchgoers each year to shift their focus from themselves to others. Churches that have participated over the last several years testify that the campaign has helped moved their "inactive" members to become active and involved. This last Sunday, October 11, was this year's annual campaign date.

Because the national poverty line – currently at 12.3 percent, according to the United States Census Bureau – has remained relatively the same during the past five years,Outreach and World Vision commissioned a national study to determine Christians' attitudes toward helping the poor. They found that 67 percent of the more than 2,800 churchgoing adults surveyed believe their church is already doing enough to help the poor in their community.

Steve Haas, vice president for church relations at World Vision, says the information exposes a discrepancy between "Christians who believe they are doing enough and the reality that Christians are not doing enough to help our communities." So this Faith in Action campaign was designed to help churches move out of this complacency.

I'd never heard of this whole thing until I read an article yesterday written in response to Sunday's event for many churches. I think it's an awesome idea and want to see if my local church could participate; the next national day is 10-10-2009. I think this type of thing helps redefine church from being what many see it, a Sunday meeting, to be more what we see in the New Testament. I like what Steve Hass has to say about what church is meant to be: "Worship was never to be confined to a single time of a single day during the week but a whole body experience of faithful obedience to a risen Christ".

What do you think about it? Do you think churches need to reach out more in their communities? Do you think this Faith in Action campaign could be an effective method to stimulate that action?