There's no such thing as a church

I've puzzled over this question for a long while: I know what the church is, but what is a church? None of the definitions or explanations I could think of, or that I have read quite worked for me. Today the penny dropped.

There is one holy, catholic and apostolic church - and there are a myriad of localised expressions of this church. We have got into the habit of thinking of some of these expressions as being churches. Contrariwise, we have gotten into the habit of thinking of other expressions as not being churches. This thinking has got so ingrained that it trips us up when we try to think about new ways of being church.

The question we should be asking of a body of Christians is whether it is an authentic expression of church. If it is, then its outward form and inner structure do not matter. If it is not then its outward form and inner structure don't matter either. Of course, the test for authenticity might not always be easy to apply or unequivocal in its answers but the principle is still important.

Indeed, even much of what I have written above may be guilty of an inappropriate reification. By thinking of church as a noun and then dividing it up into more and more nouns we have turned Paul's body of Christ into a tangible object. Does an authentic expression of church always have to involve a gathering of people? Does that gathering always have to rely on physical contiguity? Could a valid expression of church be a disparate and scattered set of people, perhaps only connected by the fact that they visit the same space from time to time (but never at the same time)? (I'm thinking of the visitors to our church building.)

There's a lot more to think on this topic but I do feel I've made a start for myself.