The Church

I've been contemplating the idea of "church". I've come across a few ideas recently which I feel give some insight to what church is.

"The purpose of the church cannot be to survive or to thrive, but to serve. And sometimes servants die in the serving."
-Erwin McManus, Unstoppable Force

"I've been trying to remove the word 'churches' from my vocabulary. We are not churches, we are 'the church'."
-Shane Claiborn, Irresistible Revolution

"A fascinating question came in [during a Townhall Meeting] in which somebody said that they were concerned that in working with the poor, [Mars Hill] would not be partnering with any secular organizations. As I reflected on that later, [aside: 'I'm trying to edit'] let just say, if you have a piece and I have a piece and those two pieces match, I don't care this person's religion, background, worldview, perspective. I don't care whether they skip the 'under God' part of the Pledge of Alliegence; I don't care where they're coming from. If they have a piece that matches my piece, I want to hook those two pieces together."
-Rob Bell, We Already Are (Matthew 28), Sermon at Mars Hill, 4.15.07