We Are Church TN

The principle of simple gatherings translates into how Sunday gatherings are facilitated.  We want people to view that week’s Scripture as their sermon.  In a traditional church, you get a sermon on Sunday, and then you get into small groups to discuss it.  For us, we want to devote ourselves to thinking deeply not about the pastor’s words but the inspired word of God – that is how we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching. We don’t want to draw people to how we explain Scripture.  Rather, we double down on the belief that if you have the Spirit of God in you, you are able to read Scripture yourself, and as a body we can wrestle with Scripture together.

Pastors don’t regularly preach a sermon on Sundays.  If the pastor feels very strongly about a message that they want to bring to the church, they can teach for 5 to 10 minutes at points.  Pastors shouldn’t be the ones to speak for the majority of the time in our gatherings. If they do, it subconsciously teaches people that they don’t have as much to offer. There is a place and time for sermons, but if every single week there is only one person talking about the Bible, instead of the whole church talking about it, we can lose the culture of everyone reading the Bible for themselves.  The role of the pastor is to ask really good questions to get their church thinking through Scripture as well as teach throughout the discussion.

We really want to get the body involved in being able to bring something to church gatherings. Make sure each person in your church understands this: If you’ve spent time with the Lord all week, meditating on the Word, you should have something to offer that would be beneficial to the body. 

We have multiple homes within our network here in Middle Tennessee. Each home has its own family dynamics, but we have some basics in common as we are in fact one family. Our Sunday Gatherings are long. We generally meet from 9:00 to 3:00 each week. In each home we are spending time discussing the Scriptures we have read throughout the week. Everyone follows the same reading plan each day which allows us each to come prepared to bring insight we have personally gained to the Body as a whole. We mostly meet together with the children while sometimes allowing them some space to play nearby. Our children are called upon to share what they have been learning about themselves and what God is showing them about Himself. 

Our Pastors occupy the role of a Facilitator as they help guide the Gathering. They are the Pastors, but they are more concerned with hearing what God is saying to everyone than sharing with everyone all that God is saying to them. They are the authority in the Gatherings and are responsible to test all things. In our Gatherings we partake of communion together. 

We have lunch together as we fellowship and prepare for the rest of our Gathering. We then meet with other homes in our network after lunch for outreach. Each home has an opportunity to develop an area of outreach, but mostly we come together to minister to men and women with disabilities who live at a property in Gallatin, TN. We help lead gatherings in their homes together as a body.

No, we meet often. We have a mid-week prayer gathering and a weekly bible study. We also meet throughout the week like any other family.

We are only able to host visitors on specific Sundays. Due to the fluid nature of our church, our gathering times and locations are always changing. We welcome you to email us at info@wearechurchtn.com to find out if there’s an upcoming gathering.

If you would like information on We Are Church Gatherings outside of the Middle Tennessee area, please email info@wearechurch.com to find out if there’s an upcoming gathering in another area.

We are locally overseen by a group of Pastors and Elders within our network. We are also overseen and accountable to an Advisory Board made up of Pastors and Elders from We Are Church in California.