The Greek word that is usually translated as church is ekklesia. And if you look up the meaning of ekklesia in a Bible study help, you will usually find something like this: an assembly of Christians gathered for worship in a religious meeting. And a lot of Christians think of church in this narrow way. It’s very common to hear people talk about going to church, or that they missed church, or that church went long. They see church primarily as an event, something that Christians are supposed to attend. But is this how church is actually presented in the Bible?
When studying the Bible, looking at the definition of words is helpful, but it’s also important to let the Bible interpret the Bible by looking at how a particular word is used throughout the context of the scriptures. Doing this brings important insight into what God intended to communicate when he used a specific word. And if we do this with the word ekklesia, it becomes clear that church means something all together different than a meeting or an assembly.
While ekklesia does mean a calling out, and a calling together, it actually refers to a people called out from the world, to come together as a community who follow and serve the Lord together. So, church is a community of believers rather than a meeting. The church is the people, not the gathering of the people.
For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. (Acts 11:26 ESV).
It would be redundant to say that they met with the meeting. Instead, it’s saying that they met with the people. They met with the community of believers. Meeting together is something the church does, but the meeting itself is not church. Believers need to learn that they are the church, and they are the church every day, all the time.
And when they arrived and gathered the church together… (Acts 14:27 ESV)
Again, they didn’t gather the gathering, they gathered the community of believers. It’s the people who are the church.
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28 ESV)
The Holy Spirit didn’t appoint elders to care for an event. He appointed them to care for God’s people. God didn’t shed His blood to purchase an event. He shed His blood to purchase a people for Himself.
As stated before, it’s common for people to say that the word church means an assembly. But if you go through the scriptures, and each time the word church is used, you switch it to the word assembly, you’ll find that most of the time it doesn’t even make sense. But it you switch church to community of believers, you’ll find that it consistently makes perfectly good sense.
So, we need to quit thinking of church as an event that we attend, and start thinking of church as something each one of us is called to be. And learning to be the church requires a major shift in how we think. Our priority must shift from weekly attendance to daily function. We need to learn to function within God’s community of believers as a way of life.
If you truly want to be a functioning part of this community, spiritually ministering to one another, and challenging and encouraging one another in our walk with the Lord, then ask the Lord to teach you how His community of believers is designed to function together, and to guide you in how this is supposed to play out in your life. And He will. Because He is faithful, and He is fully invested in this community of believers, because He purchased them with His own blood.
And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23 ESV)
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