What is the church?
At Journey, our leadership team is working through some of the issues of becoming a more stable and established local church after 3.5 years as a church plant. Two of the primary organizational structures that we are focusing on are the areas of biblical church membership and eldership. This is the third post in a series of discussions on ecclesiology, or the study of the church. In my last post, I wrote about the critical need to find the answers we are looking for primarily through scripture. Many pastors, theologians, bloggers, etc. have a lot of opinions on the matter, but so does God. It is His purpose that we have to seek first.
In this post, I want to share some basic but crucial concepts on what the “church” really is. In my culture, it is normal for someone to talk about their community of faith as “my church”. Many times, the idea is linked to a particular location or building…”Let’s go to church”, “I’ll meet you at the church”, and so on. You might ask someone you work with, “So, what church do YOU go to?” Or you might say, “I go to XYZ Church”. Even the names of our faith communities almost always include the name “church”. For the first 2 years of Journey’s life, we simply referred to our community as Journey Chattanooga. We found that a lot of people in Chattanooga thought we were a travel agency, then we changed it to “Journey Church” just to alleviate the confusion. The problem with the idea that each faith community is a separate church is truly a biblical one. The Bible never talks about the church in those terms!
In the New Testament, the word “church” is primarily translated from 2 greek words, “ekklesia” and “kyriakon”. “Church” originally comes from the Anglo Saxon word “circe” which is translated from the Greek “kyriakon” which means “belonging to the Lord”. In the English New Testament, the word “church” is also translated from the Greek word “ekklesia” which means “a gathering of people” or an “assembly”. It’s the idea of a congregation. So, a biblical definition of the church is the people who belong to the Lord. It never refers to a specific faith community, city, denomination, or building, it is the people who belong to Jesus. They include every believer from every time period who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. There is ONE church, not many, and it is made up of people. Throughout the New Testament, we do see practical descriptions of local regional churches in the sense of “chapters” of the universal church. Examples would include, “the church in Jerusalem”, “the church in Corinth”, etc. Still, they are part of the one universal church of believers.
The New Testament tells us a few other things about the church, as well.
Jesus is the head of the church.
God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. Ephesians 1:22 (NLT)
The church is the “body of Christ” and followers of Jesus are members of that body.
Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. Colossians 1:18 (NLT)
No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. Ephesians 5:29-30 (NLT)
There is a great discussion by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-30.
Some of the questions that this raises for me is..
- Who does “the church” really refer to?
- Not everyone that attends a local church body (the church assembling in a local place) is part of “the church”.
- What should the activities of the church be?
- What roles can those that attend a local church but are not part of “the church” fulfill?
The most important question I deal with, personally, right now is, what does it look like for a local chapter of “the church” like Journey to truly be led by the “head of the church”, Jesus? I’ve heard a lot of discussions by a lot of different people. Most obviously, we read scripture and act accordingly. But what would it look like for a church to be led by Jesus when he doesn’t attend a leadership meeting by sitting in a chair and giving specific direction? I’ve got some more thoughts on this for later, but this will do for now.
