What is a portable church?

The Bible gives us many examples of portable churches, beginning in Old Testament. The patriarchs worshiped God by offering sacrifices (Gen. 15) and setting up a stone pillar as they journeyed through the land of Canaan(Gen. 28). By the time of Moses we see the tabernacle, also known as the tent of meeting (Exodus 40). This is the first portable church building, and it was erected according to the Lord’s specific instructions.

In the New Testament, as Jesus and his disciples travelled to different places for three years, the early church gathered at homes, synagogues, temple and other meeting areas for worship, then scattered to be expressions of the body of Christ (Acts 1:13, Acts 2:46, Acts 8:20, Acts 17:17).

A portable church is a gathering of believers or disciples of Jesus. It is a meeting place that is neither permanent in its use of facilities nor of equipments.

Even the temples in Jerusalem from both the Old and New Testaments are portable churches in the sense that they were destroyed (2 Chronicles 36:17-21 and The Wars of the Jews by Josephus, a Jewish historian who chronicled the fall and destruction of Jerusalem in the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 70). Church buildings and temples alike are not permanent. In our day, we see many church buildings converted into museums, monuments, or centers of social and cultural events and programs.

The places where we worship are not central to our worship, but it is the glorious presence of the gospel of Jesus Christ that binds us together. We find community in the body of Christ through the praises, prayers, preaching, presentation of gifts and offerings, and participation in the Communion by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our goal as a church is to facilitate this purpose of the body of Christ as we gather in schools, theaters, community centers and warehouses…or even traditional church buildings.