Civic Engagement as Ministry

by | Oct 12, 2026 | Podcast

What counts as church? The church gathered and scattered

You’ve heard it. “I don’t need to go to church. Nature is my church.” Or, “A few buddies and I meet at a coffee shop every week. That’s my church.” In this episode of Reinventing Church, Derek Sanford takes the question seriously, then he and Danielle Hartland meet Amanda Maphis, the first of this season’s everyday influencers. Her calling turned out to be something she’d been doing for five years.

Want the whole conversation? The episode plays four clips from Amanda Maphis’s interview. Watch her full interview on YouTube.

Church leaders feel the tension. If we help people find their calling outside the walls, will they stop coming? And people outside the walls ask the opposite question: if I’m living this out at work and in my neighborhood, what does church add? Derek’s answer starts here: Scripture paints a picture of the church both gathered and scattered. Both belong in our heads when we say the word.

What does the word “church” mean in the Bible?

When Jesus tells Peter, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), the word is ekklesia. In a Greek city the ekklesia was the assembly of citizens called together to do the city’s business. The word starts with a gathering.

The New Testament keeps stretching it. Paul writes “to the church of God that is in Corinth” (1 Corinthians 1:2), and he means every believer across a large city, whether or not they were in the same room that day.

Underneath, the story moves from a place, to a person, to a people. In the Old Testament, worship and sacrifice centered on the temple. Jesus says, “something greater than the temple is here” (Matthew 12:6). He tells a Samaritan woman that worship will happen “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21). He says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), and he’s talking about his body. When he dies, the temple curtain tears from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). Then Paul tells the Corinthians, “you are God’s temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16), and the “you” is plural. God’s people carry his presence wherever they go.

What happened when the early church scattered?

The first believers in Jerusalem were “attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes” (Acts 2:46). A big gathering and a lot of small ones, and all of it was church.

Jesus had told them to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). They stayed in Jerusalem. Then persecution hit, and “they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles” (Acts 8:1). The leaders stayed. Ordinary people left, and “those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

Some of them, from Cyprus and Cyrene, reached Antioch and started talking to Greeks (Acts 11:19-21). One of the first Gentile churches in history was planted by people whose names we never learn. Antioch is where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), and it became the church that sent Paul and Barnabas out (Acts 13:1-3).

Where does the word “parish” come from?

Peter writes to “elect exiles of the dispersion” (1 Peter 1:1). He urges them “as sojourners and exiles” to live so honorably among their neighbors that “they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:11-12). His word for sojourner is paroikos, someone living beside others as a resident foreigner. The related noun, paroikia, shows up in 1 Peter 1:17 as “the time of your exile.” That’s where our English word “parish” comes from.

Around AD 96, Clement of Rome opened a letter, “The church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the church of God which sojourns at Corinth.” A parish started out as your address while you’re in exile.

Scripture makes a real case for gathering, too. Hebrews 10:24-25 tells believers not to neglect meeting together, and look at the reason it gives: to “stir up one another to love and good works.” Even the gathering is aimed at what happens after the gathering. It’s essential, and it was never meant to be the whole thing.

Why does “church” mean a building to most people?

  • Homes (first and second centuries): Paul greets Prisca and Aquila “and the church in their house” (Romans 16:5). One of the oldest church buildings ever found, at Dura-Europos in Syria, is a remodeled house. Around AD 175 the pagan critic Celsus sneered that wool workers, cobblers, and laundry workers, the least educated people in town, were getting people alone in private houses and telling them astonishing things (preserved in Origen, Against Celsus 3.55). He meant it as an insult. It reads like a description of everyday influencers.
  • Buildings (the 300s onward): once Christianity was legal, believers built dedicated halls, and the language followed. Our English word “church,” like the German Kirche, traces back to the Greek kyriakon, “the Lord’s house.” The word Jesus used names a people. The word we kept names a building.
  • The Reformation (1500s): Luther taught the priesthood of all believers and handed vocation back to farmers, mothers, and shoemakers. The Augsburg Confession (1530) defined the church as “the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered,” and Calvin’s Institutes says nearly the same thing. That definition is why a walk in the woods doesn’t qualify, and why Grace never called its online services “online church.” In 1526 Luther described small house gatherings he wished existed, then admitted, “I have not yet the persons for it.”
  • The Methodists (1700s): shut out of parish pulpits, John Wesley preached in fields and wrote, “I look upon all the world as my parish.”
  • The attractional church: church circled back to a place you invite people to.

What did the church lose along the way?

Three drifts. First, church became a place you go instead of a people you are.

Second, the gathering became the scoreboard. On a Volunteer Sunday at Grace, everyone who serves stood up to be thanked. The woman behind Derek stayed seated. She’d served for years, she told him, but in this season she was caring for her aging mother, and she’d started a Bible study at the nursing home. She was doing ministry every week. We just weren’t counting it.

Third, we never taught people to see their parish. Most people can tell you where their church building is. Very few can name their parish. Every person in the crowd on Sunday represents a cloud of people outside the building. The gathering exists to send people back to them.

What does ministry look like outside the church building?

Amanda Maphis is part of Grace Church. Five years ago, a car accident left her husband disabled, and their lives turned upside down. She manages the Erie office of a law firm, raises young-adult kids, and advocates for her husband. When she took Grace’s Handcrafted Calling class, she came away with two words: advocating opportunities.

“I was a little disappointed,” she says. “I was really looking for this opportunity to have, like, a light bulb moment where I got these two words, and I’m gonna just hit the ground running.” Her calling wasn’t a new assignment. It named what she was already doing. Her interviewer offered a better picture: maybe the light was on a dimmer.

Then on April 15, she was putting groceries away with the news on, heard about a new advisory commission for people with disabilities, and thought, “I could totally do that.” She applied, and in July she was appointed. When people online questioned whether she was qualified, she thanked them for their service, told them she was committed to making a difference, and left the door open: “God does not always call the equipped. Sometimes he equips the called.”

Her picture of everyday faithfulness is small on purpose. “I always keep in mind that I am the only view of Jesus that some people may see. Sometimes that looks like just a little bit more patience, a little bit more listening, a little bit more kindness. And we can all do that.”

And what would she tell herself five years ago? “Stay on her knees. It’s gonna be a rollercoaster, but it does get better.”

There’s a lot more in the full conversation than the four clips we played. Watch Amanda Maphis’s full interview on YouTube.

Your one-week experiment

By Monday night, write your parish down in one sentence: the place or group of people where you spend your week. It might be a workplace, a street, a team, or a waiting room. Under it, write the name of one person in it.

Before Saturday, give that person one more degree of patience, listening, or kindness than you gave them last week. You don’t have to be all of Jesus to them. Sunday night, you’ll know whether you did it.

Frequently asked questions

Does nature count as church?

Creation can move you to worship. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Church is something more specific: God’s people gathered around the Word and the sacraments, then sent out into their neighborhoods. A walk in the woods can be part of a faithful week. It isn’t a church.

What is the difference between the church gathered and the church scattered?

The church gathered is God’s people together for worship, teaching, and the Lord’s Supper. The church scattered is the same people Monday through Saturday, in workplaces, neighborhoods, and friendships. Both are the church. The gathering equips the scattering (Ephesians 4:12; Hebrews 10:24-25).

What is a parish?

The word comes from the Greek paroikia, the time of living as a resident foreigner (1 Peter 1:17). Today it can mean the place or group of people where God has put you: a workplace, a neighborhood, a nonprofit, or a group that shares a common interest.

About Amanda Maphis

Amanda Maphis grew up in the Boston area and has spent most of her life in Erie, where she and her family live in Millcreek. She is the Office Manager for the Erie office of a Philadelphia-based law firm, where she oversees daily operations, works as a corporate paralegal, and provides executive and personal support to the office’s lead attorney. In July 2026 she was appointed to a governor’s advisory commission for people with disabilities. She is a wife and caregiver to her husband, Nelson, a mom of four and a grandmother of two, and her favorite way to spend her time is with her family.

Links & resources

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