What is Church?

[Richard Aberdeen]

The Greek "ekklesia", mistranslated as 'church' in modern bibles, means "assembly" or "called out ones" for a specific purpose. This was a term applied to a Greek political assembly and appears to have been deliberately chosen by Jesus himself. In the New Testament, this term always refers to people, the human followers of Jesus.

The correct translation from the Greek is not 'church', an ambiguous Old Saxon word of uncertain etymology. The Greek "ekklesia" does not refer to either a religion, a religious building or a religious organization. It is inexcusable that modern Christians use 'church' instead of a term that Jesus specifically chose and also, use 'church' to very wrongly refer to a building, religion or religious organization. This has caused much confusion for centuries for no rational reason at all.

"Ekklesia" was the name given to the political assembly of the City of Athens and was probably also used elsewhere in reference to a socio-political gathering to discuss problems and solutions of a particular city or town. The Psalms (Psalm 22) use the term "assembly" to refer to gatherings of the Hebrew people and for both of these reasons, this may be why Jesus chose "assembly" to refer to his followers. The term "ekklesia" would have been familiar to his early followers as meaning "assembly" of people.

This term underscores the champion of the common people secular intent of the "good news" for sinners message of the New Testament. The more we study the words and deeds of Jesus, the more we realize the perfection of the teaching of Jesus. And the more we begin to see how corrupted and false modern Christianity truly is. The term "ekklesia" had no religious connotation in the time of Jesus, while the word 'church' was non-existent.

Paul, in both Ephesians Chapter 1 and elsewhere throughout his letters, makes it very clear that Jesus is the head and, his followers are themselves his "body". There is no pope, preacher, pontiff or prelate, no scientist, educator, self-help guru or anyone else who has any standing, position or authority over us. As we find explicitly stated in Romans 2:11, in regards to all of humanity: "For there is no partiality with God."

There is one high priest and one teacher, head and authority over all, who is Jesus: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Messiah Jesus" Galatians 3:28.

The fact that we are all equal without partiality before God, is so important to Paul that he not only definitively underscores it in Romans (see above), he repeats it yet a third time in similar fashion in Colossians 3:11. Those who believe ". . . have put on the new man/woman who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him/her, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Messiah is all and in all."

I Peter 2:9-10 says: "But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." ALL people who ask Jesus to forgive them and save them from their sins are ALL part of the same "royal priesthood" before God. In Jesus there is no brother or sister who is above another.

Suffice it to say, based on Colossians 3:21-23 and the rest of Paul's letters, he would be utterly appalled by what today is known as Christianity, which does not remotely represent either Jesus or Paul or the rest of his early followers:

"Therefore, if you died with Messiah from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations; do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using, according to the commandments and teachings of people? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh."

And consider this from Galatians 4:9-11: "But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years? I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain." Note how both these passages in Colossians and Galatians agree with what both Paul and Steven say in Acts, that God "does not live in temples made with hands." Acts 17:24 -- Acts 7:48.

 

[Pierac]

Let me help you... The masses think they attend Church.... they never understand they are the Church...

Have you ever noticed that your small home Bible study sometimes feels more alive than Sunday morning worship? The weekly gathering around a kitchen table or in someone’s living room (where anyone can speak, questions are welcome, and Scripture is wrestled with together) often feels more authentic than a carefully structured Sunday service.

That is not a coincidence. In many ways, it is the ekklesia functioning as it was designed to function. This observation is not an argument against Sunday gatherings. Rather, it raises an important question: What is the purpose of the gathering, and do the forms most of us have inherited allow it to accomplish that purpose fully?

The New Testament uses the word ekklesia to describe the community of Jesus’s followers. Most English Bibles translate the term as “church,” and while that translation is understandable, it carries associations the original word did not. For most modern readers, the word church immediately evokes images of buildings, institutions, professional clergy, denominational structures, and Sunday morning services. Those ideas have been attached to the word through nearly two thousand years of Christian history.

Ekklesia comes from two Greek words: ek, meaning out, and kaleo, meaning to call. It describes people who have been called out, summoned from their ordinary lives to assemble for a specific purpose. That etymology is common in popular teaching, but word parts settle little on their own; the real weight lies in how the word was used. In the civic life of the ancient Greek world, the assembly was the gathering of free citizens to conduct a city’s affairs. But the Greek civic use is only half the story, and arguably the less important half. The Athenian assembly did not primarily shape the ekklesia of the New Testament. It was shaped by the Hebrew word it translated.

When the translators of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, sought a Greek word for the Hebrew qahal (the assembly of Israel), they chose ekklesia. That choice is theologically significant, yet most modern readers never notice its implications. The qahal was not a voluntary association of individuals united by common interests. It was a people brought into existence by divine calling. Its corporate identity existed before any individual joined it. When God assembled Israel at Sinai, He did not gather a collection of separately saved individuals who then decided to affiliate with one another. He called a people into being: a covenant community whose existence was inseparable from the One who summoned it.

The New Testament adopts this understanding without alteration. To belong to the ekklesia is not merely to join an organization; it is to be incorporated into a people. This inheritance is more important than many Christians realize because much of modern Christianity is shaped by assumptions that are foreign to the biblical worldview. The emphasis on “you and God,” a personal relationship, and private salvation often reflects concepts of individual identity that are more at home in Greek thought than in the covenant framework of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Hebrew world had no natural category for a solitary believer existing independently of the covenant community. One belonged to the qahal; the other was cut off from it. The New Testament continues this perspective. Paul’s letters are addressed primarily to communities, not to isolated individuals managing their spiritual lives alone. The gifts of the Spirit are given to the body, not distributed to autonomous persons for private use.

Even the New Testament’s language of salvation is frequently corporate in scope. Believers are rescued from one age and brought into another. They are incorporated into a new humanity, made members of a household, and joined to a body. Salvation is certainly personal, but it is never merely private.

As a result, the common modern assumption that the church is something Christians attend rather than something they fundamentally are sits uneasily within the biblical framework.

 

[Pierac]

What the Ekklesia Was Not Designed to Be​

Jesus declared, “I will build my ekklesia, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Embedded within that statement is an important clue about what the ekklesia is, and what it is not. Hades, the realm of the dead, has prevailed over every human being who has ever lived. Every apostle died. Every bishop, reformer, theologian, and revivalist eventually went to the grave. If the ekklesia were merely a human organization, Hades would prevail over it repeatedly and completely, because death ultimately claims every human institution and every human leader.

Yet Jesus says that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the ekklesia. The reason is not difficult to see. The ekklesia is not ultimately an organization of men and women. It is the body of Christ, and Hades has no power over Christ. He conquered death and emerged from the grave victorious. The head of the body is the One over whom death has no authority.

The life of the ekklesia therefore rests not on human vitality, institutional durability, or organizational skill. It lives because it is united to its living Head. This distinction becomes especially important when considering one of the most persistent errors in Christian history: the idea that the ekklesia is fundamentally a human institution that Christ established but now governs through a chain of earthly successors. The New Testament presents a different picture.

Hebrews 7:23-24 draws a sharp contrast between the old covenant priesthood and the priesthood of Christ. Under the old covenant, priests died, and authority had to pass continually from one generation to the next. But Christ remains forever; therefore, His priesthood is permanent and non-transferable. His authority does not pass to successors because He Himself never ceases to hold it.

This does not mean that human leadership is unnecessary. The New Testament clearly recognizes elders, overseers, teachers, and shepherds. But none of these occupy the place of Christ. No human leader serves as His replacement, and no institution functions as His corporate successor. The ekklesia belongs to Christ, is governed by Christ, and is sustained by Christ. Whatever value human structures may have, they are not the source of its life or authority.

Ultimately, the argument is not about leadership but about headship. The New Testament consistently distinguishes between those who serve within the body and the One who rules over it. Confusing the two has often led the Church into error. Keeping them distinct preserves the central confession of the New Testament: Christ alone is the head of His ekklesia.

What the Gathering Actually Looked Like​

When the New Testament describes the gatherings of early believers, the picture is strikingly unlike anything most Christians have experienced. The differences are not minor matters of cultural style or aesthetic preference. They reflect a fundamentally different understanding of the gathering’s purpose and who oversees it.

Houses, Not Temples​

The earliest Christians met in homes. This is simply the historical record. Romans 16:5: the Church in their house. 1 Corinthians 16:19: the Church in their house. Colossians 4:15: the Church in her house. Philemon 1:2: the Church in your house. This was not a temporary arrangement born of poverty or persecution. It was the natural expression of a community that understood itself as a family, a household of God, rather than an institution requiring dedicated religious architecture.

Participation, Not Performance​

Before you read on, ask yourself a simple question: why do you go to church? Try to answer honestly, not with what you think you should say. If we are honest, most of us go because we want to receive something. Perhaps it is a message that helps us, music that lifts our spirits, or simply an hour that helps us get through the week. But underneath those reasons there is often a quieter feeling: that being there keeps us close to God. Just showing up feels like an act of faithfulness, and once we have done that, we feel we have done what is expected.

There is nothing wrong with these reasons. Wanting to be fed is a real need. Wanting assurance shows respect for God; after all, if you did not care, you would not come at all. But notice what is missing from these answers: the idea of giving something. Perhaps a word of encouragement for someone else, a thought from the week’s reading, or help carrying someone else’s burden.

---

 

[Pierac]

If you learn anything about you Church.... Learn this...

The Lord’s Table: Covenant Meal, Not Closing Ceremony​

In the first-century ekklesia, the communal meal, which included what we now call the Lord’s Supper or Communion, was not a brief ritual appended to the close of a service. It was the gathering itself, or at least its center. Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 11 presupposes a full meal eaten together. The bread and cup were embedded in the community’s shared food, literally and practically eaten together as a family.

Paul’s rebuke in 1 Corinthians 11:20-22 makes this plain: when you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. The problem Paul is addressing is not a doctrinal error about the nature of the elements. It is a social failure, the wealthier members eating their fill before the poorer members arrive, so that the shared meal has become an occasion of division rather than unity.

The correction he calls for is not the abandonment of the shared meal but its reform. The problem is that they are eating together in a way that humiliates some members and privileges others. Paul’s concern is that the meal embody the unity of the body rather than the divisions of the surrounding culture.

If the shared meal made the Table communal on the outside, the Hebrew concept of memorial made it participatory on the inside. Understanding what the Table is requires going beyond the Greek to the Hebrew concept of memorial that Jesus was drawing on when he said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The Hebrew word is zikkaron, used in Exodus 12, when God commands Israel to keep the Passover: “This day shall be a memorial for you.”

A zikkaron is more than a cognitive act of recalling a past event. In Israel’s worship, it served as a covenantal memorial through which God’s past acts were brought into the community’s present life. Remembering was not merely mental recollection; it involved active participation in the story being remembered.

Later Jewish tradition expresses this participatory understanding clearly; the Mishnah, though compiled later, likely preserves a pattern already rooted in Israel’s worship: In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally left Egypt. Israel keeping the Passover was not Israel remembering something that happened to someone else long ago. It was Israel entering the Exodus again, the community collapsing the distance between past event and present participation.

When Jesus took the bread and cup at the Passover table and said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was speaking in a context shaped by Israel’s memorial tradition. The command likely carries a richer meaning than mere recollection. As Israel entered the story of the Exodus through Passover, the Church enters anew into the story of Christ’s death and resurrection through the Table, proclaiming and embodying the reality to which the meal points.

This is why Paul says the Table is proclamation: you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). The Table functions as enacted proclamation. The Table looks backward to the cross, upward to Christ’s present lordship, and forward to the coming messianic banquet when he returns. The return of Christ stands before it, and the gathered community bears witness to both in the present. The meal locates believers within the story they confess: Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

When the Lord’s Table is reduced to a ninety-second ceremony, a wafer and a thimble of grape juice received by people who may not know one another’s names, something essential is lost on both counts at once: the meal is no longer communal in form, and remembrance has shrunk back into the bare mental recollection that zikkaron was never meant to be.

What is often lost is not the theology of what the bread and cup represent; that can survive almost any format. The meal’s covenantal and communal meaning is diminished when believers remain strangers to one another. In the New Testament, the Lord’s Table is consistently connected to the life of the body. It is not presented as merely an individual spiritual exercise, detached from the relationships it signifies. In many churches today, the central emphasis has become silence, introspection, and personal preparation before receiving the elements. That emphasis is not wrong; Paul does call believers to examine themselves.

However, when 1 Corinthians 11:28 becomes the controlling framework for the entire meal, self-examination can begin to replace communion itself. The result is that the Supper becomes primarily a private moment between the individual and God, rather than a shared covenant meal of a reconciled people.

The more a community shares life together beyond the gathering itself, the more fully the covenantal dimensions of the meal become visible. The Table does not create community out of nothing; it both expresses and strengthens the communion already being cultivated among believers. The sacrament was designed to be embedded in relationship. When it is detached from the relationships, mutual care, and shared life that characterized the earliest Christian communities, an important dimension of Jesus’s intention is at risk of being obscured.

 

[bdavidc]

There is truth here that should be recognized. The church is not a building. It is the people who belong to Christ, and Christ alone is “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18).

However, we should be careful not to go beyond what Scripture says. The New Testament records believers meeting in homes, but it never commands that churches must meet only in homes. Acts 2:46 says they continued “daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house.” They met both publicly and in homes.

It is also incorrect to use our equality in Christ to remove the authority God has given church leaders. Galatians 3:28 teaches that believers are one in Christ, but Scripture still commands, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves” (Hebrews 13:17). Elders are not replacements for Christ, but they are commanded to oversee and feed His flock under His authority.

The same caution is needed concerning the Lord’s Supper. First Corinthians 11 certainly shows that the Corinthians were eating together, but Paul did not command the Lord’s Supper to remain a full communal meal. In fact, he said, “What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?” and, “If any man hunger, let him eat at home” (1 Corinthians 11:22, 34). The purpose Paul emphasizes is to remember and proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

We do not need later Jewish tradition to tell us what Jesus meant. Christ said, “This do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24), and Scripture itself must define the practice.

The church is Christ’s people, Christ is its Head, and every practice of the church must be established by what Scripture actually teaches, not by what we imagine the earliest gatherings must have been like.

 

[stevesonthebay]

Ignatius of Antioch who was a disciple of John mentioned in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans mentions "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church".

Catholic church simply meaning universal church in Christ. Just as the individual is transformed by Christ spirit. So is Christ church. Just as the spirit renews the mind and spirit of individuals. It also renews and aligns Christ church so that all unify under the same spirit. The same spirit of truth.

 

[Ronald Nolette]

The correct translation from the Greek is not 'church', an ambiguous Old Saxon word of uncertain etymology. The Greek "ekklesia" does not refer to either a religion, a religious building or a religious organization. It is inexcusable that modern Christians use 'church' instead of a term that Jesus specifically chose and also, use 'church' to very wrongly refer to a building, religion or religious organization. This has caused much confusion for centuries for no rational reason at all.

You spend so many words over a grain of sand. This is a tempest in a treapot.

Ekklesia while means assembly also means called out ones. The church are the called out ones for the sake of Jesus. It has become the chosen word to use for the church or called out ones for Jesus. Even in modern Greek the church is the ekklesia. Yo are making too big a deal over this. there are far more larger problems than how the etymology of a word came to be.

 

[JimKnox]

You spend so many words over a grain of sand. This is a tempest in a treapot.

Ekklesia while means assembly also means called out ones. The church are the called out ones for the sake of Jesus. It has become the chosen word to use for the church or called out ones for Jesus. Even in modern Greek the church is the ekklesia. Yo are making too big a deal over this. there are far more larger problems than how the etymology of a word came to be.

You stole my thunder.
I was going to say this is a non-issue that is more flesh than Spirit of God.
We should be less concerned with this nonsense and more concerned with reaching the lost with the Gospel.