Marlou Peters: Discussion Questions

The church is not a building and is not just on Sundays. The church is basically a body of believers together and that can be at any point of time. So technically Chi Alpha could be considered the church. But Chi Alpha is focused on college students and the church is focused on basically different ages. Chi Alpha is just for a season but a church is for a life time. I think it is important to also go to the local church because once you graduate and in the market place you won’t be in chi alpha anymore. Chi Alpha prepares you for the market place and the local church is a part of that. The church also has people with all different ages and the focus of the church is different. Also I think once a week being in the main Chi Alpha service is great but why wouldn’t you want to worship Jesus even more! My answer is practical.

Yes! You mentioned marketplace! At XA we are preparing students to impact the campus, marketplace, and the world and that is our mission. It is true we are part of the Church in the sense we are a body of believers worshipping together, so in the theological sense during college a student involved in XA is involved the Body of Christ.
However our mission is to prepare them for later since XA is only present for college students, they must be prepared for functioning as believers outside the campus and it is a disadvantage to prevent them from experiencing the local church. There are far more local churches outside of college than XA so if we want to accomplish our mission to students they must attend a local church.