What is church?

Over a year has passed since I last blogged - perhaps this is not my forte.

Anyway, since my last post I have moved appointment, I am now finally in Wales.

Well, to be fussy, although I live in Wales, I am in Italy at the moment, at Palazzola, a retreat centre run by the English College, Rome. Last Sunday I ran the Rome Marathon, and now I have been having time to recover.
Whilst here I've been reading "For the parish - a critique of Fresh Expressions". For a while I've been thinking about "What is church" and what does that mean in the 21st century?
So the following is just an attempt to get some thoughts onto "paper". Perhaps if any of you dear readers would care to add your own thoughts the way ahead might become a little clearer.

What is church? First of all, people.
Who is the church for? People! Everyone!
So why aren't we full to the doors every Sunday? Now that's the question.

For whatever reason, the church does not seem to be engaging with today's generation. Sure there are exceptions to this, but by and large, that is the case.
That is not necesssrily to say that people today have no interest in spiritual matters. There are people who find an expression of something in lighting candles, silence, chants, image. Interestingly, these are the very things that Protestantism has traditionally shunned. I'm not about to change denomination, but I am saying that they're not to be feared either.

So what is the way forward? This is where my thinking gets particularly muddy, and my thoughts particularly vague.
If the church is for everyone, it must be for everyone. That works better in theory than practice, though. So what happens where the practice falls down? Either people simply leave or decode not to join, or they form breakaway congregations.
Now in a sense that's the story of the church since the year 1215, but what we're seeing with Fresh Expressions is church for particular groups of people. All very well and good if it connects them with the Gospel, but surely, a sewing circle or whatever, in itself, is not church? Or is it ?
Now I know there may be many church which do have sewing circles, and that's great. It's a part of a larger whole. Those who are not seamstreses / tailors do not have to join the circle yet can still feel part of the larger church. And many churches have beautiful banners because of the skill and devotion of people who do belong to such circles.
Yet it is just a part of the whole. The church must be bigger than that. Also, if that is just a group within the church, is it outreach? It can be used as such, but surely the real mission of the church is the work of the church itself.
As a Methodist Minister, I find that by a long way, my best means of reaching people with the Gospel is through the occasional offices of baptisms, weddings and funerals. That is what the church has been doing, amongst many other things, for 2000 years. When people see a church, especially if they return there after such a service, they must see the church as being authentic and being true to itself. It may have its difficulties, it may have its problems, but let it not hide that but show that it is working around such issues.
It is where a church or even The Church conforms to the fads of this age that it is in trouble. We must not try to be hip and trendy for the sake of it, it will not work. That does not mean that church traditions which today's world would not call hip and trendy are the only way forward, but our music, our traditions our liturgy and everything else we do are merely signs that we are the church of God.
It's a question of holding on to what the church historically is whilst not losing sight of the world we live in and its needs.
My brain's starting to ache (it doesn't take much doing!) I want to post more, but I'm not sure where that would take me, so I'l leave it there and see how my thinking develops in the coming days.
I promise not to leave it so long before I post again !
Every blessing, or, as we say in Wales, pob bendith
Robin