Our History or Why a New Church?

In the spring of 2005 a group of people got together to talk about church. These people had a few things in common: they were young (under 30), they largely felt unfulfilled or even turned off by the modern church, they longed for open community and to experience the living God - they longed for the way of Jesus. These people felt and believed that, in many ways, the modern American church is failing. Too often the church does not deeply reach and serve our communities and the world. Even more, too often the church fails to deeply reach, heal, and transform followers of Christ. So, these people talked to friends. They studied books. They began to pray together, to talk about God together, to eat together.

Questions arose. How can we experience God as a community every week? How does worship not only help us reach out to God but actually transform us? How do we create something that feels sacred to mature, adult Christians yet open to someone who has never before entered church? Why is a generation missing from church today, and how do we reach that generation (especially since it is our generation)? And how do we not only reach that generation but create an intergenerational community? How do we encourage community but let it feel organic? How do we plan worship but stray from glitzy packaging that feels at the best showy, at the worst manipulative? In short, how do we do church?

We started by stating that we don't do church, we are church. Christ is the head and we are the body, whether it's Sunday morning or Tuesday afternoon. And this is our Jesus community. We proclaim him as Lord of our lives, our community, and our world. We believe his plan for loving the world is through us, that we must love the world, and we do, however imperfectly, because He loves us. We call ourselves The Gathering because we are nothing more - a gathering of people interested in the way of Jesus. We exist as a community for people searching hard after Christ. We exist to put the resurrected Jesus on display. We exist to explore Christian Spirituality, and to do it in creative, dynamic ways - both new and ancient. We exist to bring honor God.