What is church?

A standing joke of the Church Planting module I did at college was that the tutor always avoided defining for us what 'church' actually is, preferring instead for us to figure it out.

Interestingly at a recent Alpha course evening we did the session on church, and teased out of ourselves what 'church' is. From that discussion the following emerged as a possible definition:

Church is a group of people who interact together to learn how to echo back to God and to the wider the world the 'Yes' that He has already spoken to us.

I think there is alot in that statement. Maybe in future posts I will try and un-pack it a bit.