If you know anything at all about Christian theology and vocabulary, you know that the word "church" has multiple meanings.

For reporters working at the local level, the there are two definitions that matter the most. You can hear them when church people talk and they sound something like this, when encountered in the wild.

You may hear someone say, "My family has been part of First Baptist Church for three generations." The word, in this context, refers to the actual body of believers in this congregation. If the building was damaged and these folks had to meet in a local school gymnasium, they'd still be First Baptist Church.

But you also hear people refer to the building as the church, as in, "Go two traffic lights and turn left at St. Stephen's Church. It's the church with the really tall steeple."

This brings me to that nice "Building Blocks" feature that ran in The New York Times the other day under this headline: "Church With Ties to Famed Christmas Poem Is in Need of Repair." Which poem? That was clear in the lede:

What was stirring were not creatures.

It was worse. Much worse. The soft patting sounds that the Rev. Stephen Harding and I heard inside St. Peter’s Church Chelsea -- the “Christmas Church” that owes its existence to Clement Clarke Moore -- came from rainwater. It percolated through the tin-and-timber roof and the lath-and-plaster Gothic ceiling vaults, dripping down to the balcony floor.