what is the church?

The Church is the congregation of saints (Psalm 149:1) in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered. - The Augsburg Confession, Article VII

Why do we believe in God?

# REFLECTON 1

If a man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in dread. [That is, if he were utterly unself-conscious or totally un-animal.] Since he is a synthesis he can be in dread . . . man himself produces dread.

The spirit cannot do away with itself [i.e., self-consciousness cannot disappear]. ... Neither can man sink down into the vegetative life [i.e., be wholly an animal].... He cannot flee from dread.

We can answer this question from a couple of different perspectives, one of them being existential anxiety.
People experience despair and terror from the self-aware knowledge of the inevitability of their own deaths. What then do people do to find distress?...

25 YEARS OF GOD'S BLESSINGS

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE HISTORY OF RESURRECTION LUTHERAN CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE

Whether future developments bring fewer or more Luther and into the Cambridge area, whether the congregation consequently grows larger or smaller is not the primary concern of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Resurrection. It is rather that Christian people, be they permanent or transient, must be the Church where they are if they are to take seriously that they are the Church at all. And that being the Church where one is means not only receiving the Word of the Resurrected Lord but witnessing to the Resurrected Lord where one is--in fellowship with one's fellow believers, students or foreigners. For only thus do the people of the living Lord really live. And only thus do a people of the resurrection become a Church of the Resurrection.