What is church/the church/a church?

I've been consumed with this subject for a while now, and have been formulating and sketching through my thoughts, intending to eventually work them out here as I have other streams of consciousness in the past. Look for that in October, which is currently calendared as the next chance I have to breathe.

I'm reading through Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell right now (thanks, Miles) and have tripped across a section that gets me so keyed up I just have to share the essence of it here with you. It's exactly where I'm headed in my own thinking, though I want to elaborate on it in a different way. Check this out:

My understanding is that to be a Christian is to do whatever it is that you do with great passion and devotion. We throw ourselves into our work because everything is sacred...

...this is why it is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job. If you follow Jesus and you are doing what you do in his name, then it is no longer secular work; it's sacred. You are there; God is there. The difference is our awareness.

This truth has significant implications for how churches function.

...A church is a community of people who are learning how to be certain kinds of people wherever they find themselves so they can do whatever it is they do "in the name of the Lord Jesus." The goal isn't to bring everyone's work into the church; the goal is for the church to be these unique kinds of people who are transforming the places they live and work and play because they understand the whole earth is filled with the kavod of God. ["Kavod" is the Hebrew word that we translate as "glory."]

...Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out.

...That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.

Happy teaching, friends.