So, a couple of production notes before I get started.
This study has been hard. Like many other subjects, the amount of extra-Biblical text written about this topic far outweighs the amount of text that the Bible itself actually devotes to it. People have written entire books on a word study of 'church'. Blog posts are supposed to be...shorter!
There are some sharply contrasting viewpoints out there about what the Bible means by some of the passages I've researched and I'm sure to ostracize some by tackling a subject like this. That being said, I firmly believe that the meaning of the Scriptures is to be discovered, not interpreted. In other words, Biblical commentary and interpretation can be misled and wrong even though the Bible itself cannot be. In the end, this exercise has made me realize how difficult it can be to discover someone else's meaning when the original text was written many years ago in a different language and in a dramatically different culture. Let that be your proverbial grain of salt...
Let's start with a word study...
Surprisingly, the word that is translated into today's English word 'church' in the New Testament is not a religious term at all. Transliterated 'ekklesia' and shown in the original Greek above, the word was originally used to denote a group of people who answered a calling to assemble for some civic purpose, perhaps similar to a jury summons in modern America. The most common use of the word in the first century is probably better translated as 'legal assembly' as in Acts 19:39. The Bible, however, translates the word 107 times out of 118 as 'church' or 'churches' according to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. This is mainly due, in my opinion, to the first usage of the term in Scripture.
Jesus uses the word 'ekklesia' twice in the Gospels, both appearing in the book of Matthew. In fact, Matthew 16:16 is the first time this word appears in the Bible. It's a well-known passage where the disciple Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ and Jesus responds with "...I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church..." We'll get in to what that 'rock' is in a later post. Let's focus for now on the 'my' in that sentence. Jesus says that he will build an assembly that belongs to Him! This is actually a great definition. The church today is the assembly that belongs to Jesus Christ. It's easy to understand why Bible translators would use a more religious term, like 'church' to denote Jesus' assembly of believers.
The word takes on additional shades of meaning even within the rest of the New Testament. Sometimes it's used in reference to scattered groups of Christians over a wide area as in the "churches of Galatia" (Gal 1:2). Sometimes it's used in reference to a body of Christ followers living in the same immediate area such as the "church at Antioch" (Acts 13:1). It's even used to refer to a small body Christians meeting under one roof to worship together in Romans, First Corithians, Collossians and Philemon. Have you heard 'church' used in these same ways today? While it's important to see the range of meaning for the word, it's also very important to note that 'church' is never used in Scripture to refer to a building or a place to worship. The word 'church' was only and should only be applied to people.
While this is a New Testament word, the concept exists in the Old Testament as well with the Hebrew word translated 'synagogue'. In fact, 'synagogue' was also only used originally to refer to the group of Israelites called together to worship. It was much later that people began to refer to the building where that worship took place as the 'synagogue'. This shows a couple of interesting things. First, the use of this concept shows that both the early Christians and the Jews were eager to show their historical connection to the congregation of Israel which was, in effect, the 'church' of the Old Testament. Additionally, I find it interesting that both the Jewish culture and the modern Christian culture have begun to refer to the 'church' as a place rather than a group of people. I believe that this, at its heart, is an attempt to push God back into his box and squeeze him out of our every day lives. It's a cultural erosion of the truth.
So, for our purposes I propose that the church of Jesus Christ is defined in its broadest sense as the company of those belonging to Christ throughout the world. It ranges down to its most narrow sense referring to the smallest of fellowships as well. I will try to keep that definition in mind as we continue the study.
Next, we'll begin to look at the origins of the church, again focusing on the description of church formations in the New Testament.
I welcome your feedback, questions and criticism.