Church Terminology

Those of you who know me well may want to stop reading right now because I am about to embark on a familiar rant. I have become increasingly agitated the last few weeks regarding the general terminology most followers of Jesus use regarding church. Let me explain…

This past Sunday was Easter. I decided to drive over to Normandale Lake in the morning and spend some time reading, praying, etc. When I turned on the car the radio was set to an AM Sports Radio Station (surprise, surprise). I switched over to FM and the local Christian Radio Station came on. Now to be perfectly honest I don’t listen to Christian Radio all that much. But Gretchen likes to listen to it so she must have turned it there the last time she was in the car. I immediately became interested in the dialogue between the two disc jockeys and their callers. People were calling in to tell the disc jockeys “who they invited to church for Easter Sunday.” Phone call after phone call went something like this…

Disc Jockey: “You’re on the air with …..”
Caller: “It is great to be with you.”
Disc Jockey: “So who did you invite to church for Easter?”
Caller: “I invited my co-worker.”
Disc Jockey: “Do you think he will come to church with you?”
Caller: “I’m not sure. But I hope so. I think coming to church would be great for him.”
Disc Jockey: “Well let’s hope he does go to your church on Sunday and hears a powerful sermon. Next caller.”

Conversations similar to this one happened over and over again during my short ride to the lake and there I was on Easter morning becoming more and more angry. Now those of you that know me already know why I am being so grumpy while others of you are wondering what the big deal is. You’re probably thinking, “Why is Jamie so upset that people are inviting their friends and family to church on Easter Sunday?”

The reason I am so agitated is this kind of talk has been going on for so long that the church in the west has lost sight of what, or I should probably say, WHO the church actually is. Let me illustrate…

By asking the following question, what are you implying the church is:

Where do you go to church? Or… Where’s your church? To me you are implying the church is a building. The person asking where you go to church wants to know where is the location of the building you go to on Sundays.

Or what about this question:

What time is church? Based on this question the church has become a service that happens once or twice a week. Or to say it more plainly – church has been boiled down to an event you attend.

I was more agitated than usual on Sunday as I listened to the dialogue on the Christian Radio because of a conversation I had with a friend the previous morning. A new friend of mine is struggling with some issues in his life and asked if I would spend some time with him to assist him in overcoming these struggles. I wanted to find out what role his church and pastoral leadership were having in his life so I began to ask questions about his church. The more we talked the more evident it became that my friend believes church is simply a building or an event to attend. I asked him what he though church actually was. Here was his response:

“Church is a place we go to worship God.”

As soon as he finished this sentence I became very sympathetic towards him. Here is this guy trying to conquer intense struggles in his life and the role of church in his life is an hour a week where he sits in a pew and participates in a service. When the service is over he gets up, walks out of the building, and has nothing to do with “church” until the following Sunday.

I don’t blame my friend for thinking this way. Why wouldn’t he believe that church was a place to go to worship God when that is all he has been taught in his young Christian experience? Even Webster defines church in this way:

1. a building for public Christian worship. 2. a religious service in such a building.

This kind of thinking not only falls short of what was originally meant by “church” in the Bible, I believe it is actually harmful and keeps the church from becoming all of what Christ intended us to be.

The Greek word for church found in the New Testament is “ekklesia”. This word is used roughly 115 times in the New Testament. In our English translations the word “church” is used 113 out of the 115 times we find ekklesia. The other times ekklesia is used it is translated into English as “assembly”.

The word “ekklesia” is an interesting Greek word. The root word for which we find ekklesia means to “call out”. In classical Greek ekklesia was used to mean “an assembly of citizens summoned by the crier, the legislative assembly” (Cooper B. Abrams). To put it more plainly, these were men & women called out to serve the legislative assembly.

So when ekklesia is used in the New Testament it is meant to speak of people “called out” to live a life of following Jesus. What I believe the New Testament is saying is that the church is PEOPLE (Abs). That is why Paul wrote this in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (1 Corinthians 1:2)

or in 1 Thessalonians 1:1…

“Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.”

Paul isn’t writing to a building or to a service. He is writing to people that have been “called out” of an ordinary existence and into a relationship with God that impacts every area of life. Paul is writing to an assembled group of people in Corinth or in Thessalonica that are striving to live life with purpose and meaning. And this meaning & purpose is to love God with all of the heart, soul, and mind and to love their neighbor as themselves.

For us to truly and effectively live this kind of purpose-filled life we need the church (PEOPLE – CALLED OUT ONES) to assist us in the journey. We can’t do that by attending a service once a week in a building. We need to assemble ourselves daily and push each other to live a life worthy of the amazing calling put on our lives. That is why the early church (the people) did this:

46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…” – Acts 2

The more we communicate that church is a building, or a service, or programs, etc. the farther away from the true identity of “church” we become. Church is you and I! When I sit down with a brother in Christ at a coffee shop church is happening. When I am at home with my family, church is going on. Jesus said that “He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.” Do we really think Jesus meant that a lot of buildings with amazing programs would be established? The church is Jesus talked about is more and more people accepting His offer of eternal life and living a “called out” life by bringing the realities of the Kingdom & will of God to earth as it is in Heaven.

So no matter what facility your church uses to meet in or what time your church gathers, these are just tools and functions used to assist you in living out your purpose as a called out one. Please do not limit your participation with your church to a location or time of the week. You need them and they need you. Become the church Jesus intended for you to be. Rather than only trying to bring your co-workers, family members, and neighbor to “church” where they can hear about Jesus in a service, live in such a way that the church (a.k.a – you) is living a called-out life in your home, workplace, and neighborhood. Take and embody the person of Christ in those environments so the “church” can grow as more and more people accept God’s gift of eternal life and live a called-out life.

If you are still reading, thanks for paying attention to my rant. As you can tell this subject is a valuable one for me and I barely scratched the surface. If you have questions or want to dialogue, lets get together soon.