What Defines a Local Church?

God willing, on Sunday afternoon, October 26, our members will gather for our last membership meeting of the year. One special agenda item is our church offering two services in 2026. The pastors made this announcement on September 10 with the intent to discuss it as a church family at this meeting, but you might be wondering: What will that discussion be like?

There are all kinds of entry points to consider this topic, and I’ll do my best to start with vision. I want to be clear about what is motivating the pastors’ leadership here, and why we think it’s worth it. After laying this foundation, we intend to open the floor to hear from our members. What excites you? What concerns you? We’ve heard both the last month, and it’ll be good to talk altogether. The FAQ can be helpful, and I encourage you to take a look, but we agree with the apostle John that face to face is better (see 2 John 12). 

One aspect of this discussion that we’ll want to handle carefully is how we talk about the nature of the church itself. I know that some of our members hold a sincere and biblically informed conviction that the local church is the gathered assembly, and therefore that a church meeting in separate services would, by definition, fall short of its nature. This position can be called a “one-assembly” view. While I’m personally sympathetic to the concern it raises, have close friends who hold it, and consider it a fruitful contribution to ecclesiology, neither I nor the other pastors are ultimately persuaded by it (this is #7 in the FAQ). My hope is that our discussion doesn’t get pulled into a full-out theological debate, but that it remains marked by humility and graciousness, even when we see things differently.

Defining “Church”

Some, then, might ask: How do the pastors define the church? What is it? How should we think about it?

This is a bigger, more complex topic than you might think — because the biblical authors don’t intend the exact same thing every time they use the word “church.” To account for this, Christians historically have distinguished between the church universal and the church local. 

Consider two examples: 

• Ephesians 1:22–23 — “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (This would be the church universal.)

• Acts 11:26 — “For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” (This would be the church local.)

If the church universal refers to all Christians from all times and places, the church local is the manifestation of the universal in spatio-temporal confines, bound together by a shared commitment to one another and a common mission (see Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 29–30). This helps narrow our focus.

Narrowing Our Focus

So, what exactly is a local church?

Again, there is more than one way to answer the question: 

We might say, “The local church is the authority on earth that Jesus has instituted to officially affirm and give shape to my Christian life and yours” (Leeman, Church Membership, 24).

Or, “The local church is a community of Christians who live as the on-the-ground expression of the supremacy of Jesus by advancing his gospel in distance and depth” (Parnell, “The Local Church and the Supremacy of Christ”).

Or, “[The local church] are saints by calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and walking) their obedience unto that call of Christ; and do willingly consent to walk together, according to the appointment of Christ; giving up themselves to the Lord, and one to another, by the will of God, in professed subjection to the ordinances of the Gospel” (1689 London Baptist Confession, 26.6)

Or, “[The local church] is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the ordinances of Christ; governed by his laws, and exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by his Word” (1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 13).

Or, “The [local] church is the body of people called by God's grace through faith in Christ to glorify him together by serving him in his world” (Barrow, 1589).

Or, “… Who is the church? The answer is fairly simple: the members comprise the local church” (Dever, The Church, xxiii).

More could be (and is) said about the local church, but at its most basic level, as John Piper explains, “What establishes the visible union of a group of believers into a church is that they make a covenant with each other to be the church” (Why a Church Covenant). In other words, a local church is a group of Christians who mutually agree to oversee one another’s discipleship and advance the gospel. They bind themselves together by covenant, appointed officers, and a common mission. 

Again, the one-assembly view argues that what most essentially makes a church a church is its gathering — that unless the whole church can meet together at one time, it ceases to be one church. “Two gatherings will feel like two churches” — I get it and share the instinct to guard the church’s unity and visibility. But we believe the essence of the church lies not first in the event of gathering, but in the covenant relationship that precedes and sustains that gathering.

Getting to Love

This is why, practically speaking, we understand the birth of Cities Church to have happened on January 7, 2015, when we covenanted together, not on January 18 when we gathered for our first worship service. The gathering isn’t what makes the local church what it is. The covenant established our identity; the gathering displays it. 

Beyond these ontology scruples, important as they are, our deeper desire is to be a healthy church that reflects the heart of God. We want our joy in God to overflow, gladly meeting the needs of others and drawing them into the same grace we’ve received. That is the clearer mark of the church we read about in the New Testament. It gets back to the definition of love. 

John Piper puts it beautifully, “Love is first a deeply satisfying experience of the fullness of God’s grace and then a doubly satisfying experience of sharing that grace with another person" (116). This is love that expands, spreads, and welcomes. It reaches out with arms wide open, longing for more people to taste and see the goodness of this God — for our deepening joy and their everlasting good. I’m eager to pick up here on October 26.