Founded in San Francisco in 2013, We Are Church is a family of simple churches pursuing the New Testament vision of church. We gather in homes across the globe to share daily life with Jesus and one another, multiplying communities wherever God leads.
We keep it simple and reproducible. The practices below describe how we walk with Jesus together, equip every believer, and multiply healthy churches, trusting the Spirit to do what only He can do.
To help us truly love each other, we've committed to churches of 10-20 people meeting in homes. Once we reach 30 or more people, it becomes difficult to live like a family, truly know each other, and carry burdens together. Many churches use community groups, but people often view Sunday gatherings as primary and community groups as optional. We want the primary context of church to be a spiritual family of 10-20 people.
When things got out of control in Corinth, Paul reminded them how he started the church. In 1 Corinthians 2 he avoided "eloquence" and "human wisdom" when building the church, wanting their walk with Jesus built on the gospel's power alone. Jesus drew people only with Himself. Are we willing to strip everything away to ensure people are drawn by Jesus alone?
In order to help us truly love each other, we’ve committed to having churches of 10-20 people meeting in a home. We’ve seen that once we get to 30 or 50 or 100 people in a church it becomes increasingly more difficult to live like a family, truly know each other, carry each other’s burdens, and build each other up. Many churches will do this in the form of a community group, which is great. But far too often people view a Sunday morning big gathering as the primary context of church, and the community group as optional. For us, we want to everyone to opt into sharing life, and therefore the primary context of church for them is a spiritual family of 10-20 people.
When things started getting out of control in Corinth, Paul reminded them of how he started the church. In 1 Corinthians 2 he states that he intentionally held back from using “eloquence,” “human wisdom,” and “wise and persuasive words” when starting and building the church. He didn’t want their walk with Jesus to be built on anything other than the power of the gospel. Likewise, Jesus was unwilling to draw people with anything other than Himself. Are we willing to do the same in our churches? Are we willing to strip everything away to make sure people are being drawn by Jesus and Jesus alone?
Everyone is called to make disciples. We are all called to share the gospel with non-believers in hopes that they would follow Jesus. We are all called to take responsibility for the spiritual care of other believers. But discipleship is hard and messy. It involves intentionally getting to know someone, having hard conversations when sin is evident, working through conflict, and spending extra time with them when life gets hard.
Paul said “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). He goes on to list many different types of gifts that the Spirit gives to believers for the sake of the body. Then, he explains how every part of the body is needed and that we must be careful not to develop a mindset that some gifts are more necessary than others. But is that truly how we function in the church? Does every single believer in a church realize that they are just as needed and important as anyone else in the church? Or do they tend to think that the preacher and worship leader are more important?
So many churches begin small, relational, and discipleship-focused, but aren’t able to maintain those characteristics as numeric growth happens. Before they know it, they have become more and more of a machine rather than a healthy family. Meeting in homes sounds great, but what happens as the church grows? How does a church adapt as the Lord adds to their number? One word: Multiplication. The true fruit of an apple tree isn’t apples, but rather more apple trees. The true fruit of a strong leader is not followers, but more strong leaders. The true fruit of a healthy church is not congregants, but more healthy churches. God has designed the world to be one that reproduces and multiplies.
Our Covenant holds our confession for now, simple and biblical, as we keep seeking Jesus and clarifying language together.
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Our Covenant is a clear statement of shared faith and shared life. When you join, you affirm the gospel we confess and the practices we commit to as a family of simple churches.
Find answers to common questions about our values and practices within the church.
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. Please email info@wearechurch.com to find out if there’s an upcoming gathering.
Currently we have a few locations outside of the Bay Area as listed on our locations page.
The principle of simple gatherings translates into how Sunday gatherings are facilitated. We want to 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.
Church is not a Sunday morning thing, and therefore we shouldn’t think of training and ministry mostly in terms of Sunday morning programs. Our children get to be in a community of believers who love each other deeply, live life together, support each other, and watch each other’s kids. It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. We believe the best thing for the discipleship of our children are 1) parents who are discipled well 2) the body of believers who will be the aunts and uncles in the Lord and will love them and model Christ to them in the normal rhythms of life.
Regarding how to incorporate children at your church in your gatherings, pastors have freedom to think through what would work best for your group. A church with a group of kids under 5 will look a lot different from a church that has only 2 teenagers. A guiding principle is that we want to value children. We don’t want to segment people out too much based on age. And we want the whole church to be interacting with each other. Where we can, we’d love to have kids engaged in gatherings. But more than anything, we want them to be engaged relationally. This might mean that when you spend time with other people in the church, discipling them or just sharing life, you have the children around you as well, so that there can be more space for different age groups to live life together and to love one another.
Absolutely! We offer trainings in San Francisco and online through our Church Intensive.
If you have further questions that aren't answered above, you can contact us at info@wearechurch.com. Please note that this email is primarily for questions about WeAreChurch. If you have questions of a pastoral nature, we recommend discussing it with your local church community.