What is the Church?

The title of this piece is a question posed by our teacher, Bill Johnson, at Kingdom Life in Muskegon last Sunday morning. Bill asked us to say the first thing that came to mind when we heard the word “church.” There being a number of mature believers in the room, things like “community,” and “fellowship,” and “body” were shared. One person was honest enough to say that the first thing he thought of was a little white building with a steeple.

Truth be told, most Christians share a similar image with that man. Even though we know better, our language betrays us. If someone asks where you go to church, the question itself implies a geographical answer, and most will respond accordingly. Where is a certain meeting to be held? At church, again, a physical location. Even when Christians say my church does this, or my church has that, there is a sort of allusion back to a building in the minds of most people. Be honest.

As one would expect, last Sunday Bill confirmed the idea that the church is people, not places, but he went a step further in defining the purpose of the people known as “the church.”  The Greek word most often used in the New Testament for church is ecclesia (εκκλησια). He pointed to the literal meaning, “called out ones” which many of us already knew. Then he did something amazing (I say with all humility for someone who has studied the Scripture as long as I have): he told me something I didn’t already know.

In the Greek culture, for several centuries leading up to the coming of Christ, ecclesia referred the council of men who participated in the ruling government. This assembly made the rules that governed the actions of the citizens. This idea would have been in the forefront of his audience’s mind. So when Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 16:18 that the “Gates of Hades” would not be able to withstand the pressure of the church, the ecclesia, He was saying that the rules of order dictated by Him and established by His people would overcome the forces of darkness and evil. Wow!

The second thing Bill shared which I had not seen before is the use of another word which describes the church. Paul told the Philippian church that their “citizenship” (πολιτευμα) was in heaven (3:20). According to Thayer’s Greek lexicon, that word refers to “the administration of civil affairs… [or] the constitution of a commonwealth.” Once again, the church is a governing body. Bill also reminded us that Jesus most often identified His purpose as bringing the Kingdom of God or Heaven to earth. Kingdom (βασιλεια in Greek) implies rulership.

That all sounds great, but we know from other things Jesus said and from the rest of the New Testament record that it would not be easy, nor would the effort be unopposed. At one point, Jesus said that the Kingdom would be taken by force, and Paul regularly used words like “battle” and “fight” to describe the Christian endeavor. The disciples who heard Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 16:18 would have caught this more poignantly than most of us because Jesus’ use of “Gates of Hades” had a particularly sinister meaning in the First Century.

There may even have been a geographical/cosmic significance to what Jesus proclaimed. The events of Matthew 16 took place in Caesarea-Philippi, a region of the Trans-Jordan near Mount Hermon. This area had been recognized for centuries by the people who lived there before and during the Israelite occupation as the headquarters of their chief god, Baal. Long before Jesus used “Gates of Hades,” people were using the phrase to refer to the very spot on which He stood. It was considered the gate to the underworld where their “gods” lived and ruled. Against this, Jesus said, the church would prevail. Wow again!

There is one other thing I learned on Sunday: the Romans adopted the idea of ecclesia (along with many other Greek traditions) and used it to refer to the colonizers they sent to conquered territories. The purpose of the Roman ecclesia was to spread Roman culture and thinking in the new lands. This is a perfect description of the church Jesus foresaw when He gave last instructions to His followers in Matthew 28:19-20: “As you go into the world, make disciples of all nations, teaching them all I have commanded you, baptizing them.” Making disciples as Jesus commanded is giving people a new order of government to their lives; it changes their culture into one that follows the teachings of the Master. Baptizing them identifies them with their new Master in contrast to their old allegiances.

The true purpose of the church is imbedded in its very name: spread the rule of God; advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The denomination called "The Salvation Army" seems to get this. One of the branches of the church I grew up in, the Church of Christ, frequently makes a theologically significant statement in large letters on their buildings: “The Church of Christ Meets Here.” We might gather in a building or a house or on a street corner for some good purpose, but that is just a meeting. That is not “church.” Doing “church” is hitting the streets, the workplaces, the homes of those under the control of the enemy and introducing them to the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. True church activity translates people from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. Church is a verb. Where do you go to church?