What is a Church? What is the Church? Church Basics. Basic Ecclesiology. Introduction to the Church.

What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community

by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts

Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.

v

What is a Church? Introduction
Part 1 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Monday, October 2, 2006

"What is a church?" Now that seems like a easy question, the sort of question one might answer in an simple sentence or two. "A church is a building in which Christians meet for worship," is one obvious possibility. "A church is a group of Christians who gather for religious purposes" is another. These sentences aren't bad for quick answers, but they don't take us very far if we want to understand truly what a church ought to be.

You'll notice that I moved from the descriptive – what a church is – to the evaluative – what a church ought to be. This wasn't accidental on my part. In this series on the church I'm not so much interested in what churches actually are, or in what people think churches are, as I am in what churches should be. When I ask "What is a church?" I'm wondering about the ideal rather than actual.

My subtitle reveals the perspective from which I intend to address this question. I plan to discuss the nature of the church from a biblical perspective. That's the sort of thing that evangelical Protestants like me tend to do, so I expect this is no surprise. I believe that Bible is God's inspired Word, and therefore is to be our chief guide both for faith and life. In my opinion, nothing in this world tells us more authoritatively what the church ought to be than Christian Scripture.

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers would agree with me up to a point. They affirm the authority of Scripture as God's Word. But they add the parallel authority of tradition, especially as embodied in the creeds and historic teachings of the church, and in the bishops who guard and pass on this tradition. I believe that Christian tradition ought to be taken very seriously. We Christians have much to learn from our brothers and sisters who have gone before us and who have sought to understand and to be the church. But, ultimately, I'm convinced we should weigh their convictions and practices in light of biblical teaching. For me as for millions of Protestants across the globe, Scripture trumps church tradition though without denying the value of tradition.

I also think it's important to pay close attention to how Christians throughout the world interpret Scripture when it comes to the nature of the church. We all tend to read the Bible in light of our own cultures. We all project our meanings and values into the text. Careful interpretation of Scripture can help us see what is really there and not be tricked into thinking our projections are God's revealed Word. But even then we can't escape completely from our own worldviews and biases. Listening to what Christians from other cultures hear the Bible saying (and not saying) can help us interpret Scripture more accurately. But, even then, I believe Scripture stands authoritatively above the experience of all Christians. It's always possible to say, "I see how you understand this text, but I believe your reading isn't quite right." Of course someone who disagrees with my experience might very well say the same thing.

At this point I won't go on and on talking about the interpretation of Scripture. I mostly want to clarify "where I'm coming from" in this series, as we'd say in California. My main starting points are these:

1. Though I take seriously both Christian tradition and the experience of contemporary Christians throughout the world, I believe Scripture has the final word when it comes to matters of faith and practice, including the question of what a church should be. Therefore, the best way to discover what a church should be is by a careful study of Scripture.

2. One way we can get to the true meaning of the biblical text is by reading it in light of its own cultural setting. If we want to understand the writings of the Apostle Paul, for example, we would do well to see them in light of his Greco-Roman-Jewish world. Doing this will help us avoid projecting our meanings and biases into the text.

If you've done some reading in theology, you'll recognize that I'm going to address questions of ecclesiology (from the Greek words ekklesia, meaning "assembly, church" and logos meaning "thought, word, principle"). I'm not planning to engage in a technical conversation, however, one suitable only for theologians. Rather, I want to write for the ordinary reader, especially the average Christian who wonders "What is a church, really?"

Note: If you're looking for a more theologically-oriented approach to the church than I will offer here, but one that is suitable for well-educated lay readers, I highly recommend It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives, by Tod Bolsinger. This award-winning book explains the nature of the church in light of the triune character of God, with lots of compelling illustrations and practical implications.

Before we launch our investigation into biblical texts that reveal the nature of the church, I want to explain why I'm doing this series at this time. I'll take this on in tomorrow's post.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Why This Series?
Part 2 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Tuesday, October 3, 2006

This is the second post in a series I'm calling: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community. Yesterday I explained that I'm planning to answer this question from a biblical point of view, though without denying the value of church tradition and Christian experience. I believe that, in the end, however, Scripture is the most authoritative guide for matters of faith and practice, including questions of ecclesiology (the study of the church).

One additional point of clarification might be helpful here. Notice that I'm asking "What is a church?" rather than "What is the church?" I'm more concerned in this series about the nature of a particular Christian community than the whole configuration of Christians throughout the world and/or throughout the cosmos. Of course these issues of local church/global church are interrelated. But my primary focus is on an individual Christian community, a church, if you will, rather than the church.

Why This Series?

I'm taking on this series at this time for a variety of reasons. Mostly it is an outgrowth of my ministry as pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church. In fact, I plan to use this series as a resource within my own church, especially as I teach our new members classes and as I work with my leaders. I'm finding that folks often have differing visions of what a church should be, and that these differences can be either enriching of our corporate life or debilitating, or both. If, for example, people join our church with a particular image of what a church should be, but it turns out that we are not what they had imagined, then it's likely they will become disillusioned and start looking for another church that offers what they want. Nobody wins when this happens. If, on the other hand, members of my church have a clear, common vision of what a church is, then their experience will be more positive. If our leaders share this vision together, then our church will be healthy and growing in the right direction.

As I write this series, there are lots of competing visions of the church in the marketplace of religious ideas. Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Church has had a major impact on Christian thinking about the church, not to mention the practice of individual churches. This book has helped thousands of churches clarify their mission and focus more intentionally upon it. Younger Christians (and a few not so younger ones) tend to be influenced more by an amorphous configuration of ideas and practices known as "the emergent church" or "emerging movement" or something like this (see, for example, The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball or Scot McKnight's excellent collection of blog entries on The Emerging Movement). Of course there are dozens of other visions of the church floating around in the Christian atmosphere, ranging from home-based Pentecostal communities to more traditional churches that emphasize Reformed theology and the regular administration of the sacraments. Moreover, many evangelical Christians continue to be drawn to more liturgical churches of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic variety. Talk about a wide range of perspectives on the church!

Then you can throw into the mix the crises in which many of the well-established American denominations find themselves, including my own, the Presbyterian Church USA. Though our potentially-schismatic squabbles don't have to do primarily with the nature of the local church, they have touched upon this issue, especially with respect to who actually owns the property of a particular church. Many Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and others have been asking what it means for a local church to be connected to a larger body of believers. Is this essential? Or optional? Should such connections ever be broken? And if so, when? Though I don't intend to address these questions much in this series, they do loom over this investigation to some extent.

I determined to do an extended series on the question "What is a church?" a couple of weeks ago. Since we at Irvine Presbyterian Church need to focus again on the biblical basics of Christian community, I figured this might be true of other Christians and churches also. This hunch was confirmed today by an article on the Christianity Today website . The title of this article reads, "What's Next: Local Church." The subtitle explains: "We asked 114 leaders form 11 ministry spheres about evangelical priorities for the next 50 years. First up: Fresh basics for the local church." There you have it: fresh basics for the local church! So it appears that a series on biblical basics for the local church might in fact be helpful to others outside of my own church.

I'm particularly eager to help well-meaning Christians overcome some of the confusion they feel about what the church should be. Even in one particular church, even among leaders who share a common heart for Christ and a common commitment to Scripture, you'll find a wide range of visions of a church. Some of these visions are derived from Scripture and to that extent are helpful. Others come from a wide variety of other sources. In my next post I want to consider where people get their ideas of what a church should be.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church?
Part 3 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Wednesday, October 4, 2006

People today have a wide variety of ideas about what a church should be. If you ask a dozen people you'd probably get a dozen different answers.

One of my favorite answers came during a children's sermon preached by a young seminarian. This story was related to me by someone who was in the congregation that fateful day. For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, a children's sermon comes in a worship service when the folks twelve and under are brought forward for a sermonette by the pastor or some other church leader. Often the sermon begins with a question like, "What is God?" The preacher gets a bunch of funny – and incorrect – answers, and then offers the right answer, sometimes with a visual aid.
		A typical childrens sermon

At any rate, a young man was doing his seminary internship at a church. As low man on the totem pole, he got tabbed for the children's sermon, and decided to talk about what the church really is. He gathered the children together in the front, and began with his question: "So, boys and girls, what is a church?" He fully expected that the kids would say a church is a building and so forth. He'd get to wrap up with the correct answer, that the church is not the building but the people. As soon as the seminarian uttered his question, one of the boys shot his hand into the air.

"Yes," the young preacher said, "what is a church?"

"The gathered assembly of believers in Jesus Christ," was the boy's answer.

The seminarian was speechless, not knowing where to go from here. The kid had said exactly what the preacher was going to reveal at the end of a three-minute dialogue. From his point of view, there wasn't anything more to say. So after a few seconds of embarrassed silence, he thanked the boy and dismissed the children. (What the seminarian did not know was that the theologically-sophisticated boy was the son of a seminary professor in the congregation, and should never have been called on first!)

Most people don't get their ideas of church from seminary professors, however, or even from their fathers. Rather, then get them from a wide variety of sources. At a recent meeting of leaders from my church, I asked, "What shapes people's expectations of church? Where do people get their ideas of what a church ought to be?" Their answers were revealing:

1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church.

Indeed, this is surely true for people who have some past experience of church. These days, more and more people come to church with no religious background whatsoever. But most folks still have at least some prior history of church, even if it's limited to weddings and funerals. As a pastor, I've found that people usually have both positive and negative experiences from which to draw. They want a church to be like what they've experienced in some ways, but not like other aspects of previous churches where they've been involved.

Many people look upon their past church experience through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. I've had people from my church, for example, complain about some innovation in worship and talk about how wonderful their church was growing up. When I ask if their church helped them to know Christ, to grow as His disciple, or to have a desire to worship God, they'll say something like, "No, but that's not the point." Looking back, they love what they remember about worship in their childhood church. But, in point of fact, that church did not actually teach them to know and love the Lord, and it didn't even help them want to worship God when they were young.

In tomorrow's post I'll discuss three other ways people get their ideas of what a church should be.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Section B
Part 4 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Thursday, October 5, 2006

Yesterday I began considering the sources of people's ideas about church. To review, here is my first point:

1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church.

Today I'll explore three other common sources.

2. People get their ideas of church from pop culture.

Even folks who've never stepped into a church might have seen the television show 7th Heaven (about a minister and his family) or The Simpsons, which frequently portrays The First Church of Springfield with its lovingly hypocritical pastor, the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy. Countless millions of people have seen the church through the lens of The Da Vinci Code, with its deluded believers and diabolical bishops. On a happier note, millions of others have read about the exploits of Father Tim, the beloved, Episcopal priest in Jan Karon's Mitford Series. Here there are no sinister plots in church, only a bunch of ordinary, small-town folk sharing life together in a traditional, small-town church. One of my favorite series of novels, The Starbridge Series by Susan Howatch, explores the psychological, theological, and spiritual struggles of religious leaders in the Anglican church. Of course there are dozens of other images of the church in pop culture. These often shape the expectations of Christians and non-Christians alike.
		The Rev. Timothy Lovejoy

3. People get their ideas of church from the news.

Much of the time, I'm sad to say, what people get from the news isn't all that positive. Church scandals tend to make headlines, deservedly so. Churches that are faithfully living out the Christian life usually fly under the media radar, however. There are exceptions to this rule, however. A couple of days ago the Los Angeles Times ran a fine piece on the recognition of World Communion Sunday in many churches. (As you may have noticed, recently I came down pretty hard on the Times for its reporting of the All Saints vs. IRS battle. But the Times often does refreshingly excellent work reporting on local churches, synagogues, and mosques. Here's another recent example.)

4. People get their ideas of church from a projection of their personal needs and preferences.

Some years ago a man started attending Irvine Presbyterian Church faithfully. He and I had lunch together, and during that lunch he laid out his vision for how our church could get involved in his personal mission. His was a valid mission to be sure, involving the expansion of ethics education in schools. I explained to him that our church would be glad to support him in this mission, but that it wasn't going to be our primary focus. He proceeded to lecture me on what the church ought to be, and how our church was falling short of this calling. In a nutshell, we needed to join him in his ethics crusade as our number #1 priority. For a while he tried to reshape our church according to his vision. When this didn't happen, eventually he left in anger and disappointment, believing that we weren't what a real church should be. (Ironically, this man didn't even profess to be a believing Christian!)

I've seen this sort of thing happen in people time and again. They have a need and figure the church is the sort of place that should meet this need. Sometimes it’s the desire to expand ethics education. Sometimes it's the need for friendship, or financial assistance, or political activism, or, well, you name it. Folks take their needs and project them onto the church.

To be sure, the church does meet many needs. And often people are drawn to church because of felt needs that aren't the church's main business. For example, someone might come to church hoping to make new friends. She finds these friends, indeed, but also much more than she bargained for, like friendship with Jesus, for example. Rarely do people come to church because they feel a need to worship the living God or grow as disciples of Christ.

In my next post I'll address one more source from which people get their ideas of what a church should be. This one, I believe, is often one of the most influential.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Section C
Part 5 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Friday , October 6, 2006

In my last two posts I began exploring various sources from which people get their ideas of what a church should be. These included:

1. Past experience of church
2. Pop culture
3. The news
4. A projection of their personal needs and preferences

Today I want to explore one other source, a source that has a powerful influence on the way people think about the church.

5. People get their ideas of church from analogous institutions.

People often expect the church to be like some similar organization or event. For example, some people expect a church to be like a concert. When you go to a concert, you file into an auditorium. You sit in rows and watch something happening on the stage up front. If the concert is any good, you feel lots of positive emotions. At times you might even get into the act, but just a bit. You leave feeling uplifted and satisfied by the performance. Church, for many people, is just like this, only better, because you don't need a ticket, and don't even have to pay anything if you don't want to.

Others think of church like a school. They come for religious education. In my community, dozens of young parents start attending our church each year because they want their children to receive moral training. And we do provide this sort of thing. Children gather in age-grouped classes. They have curriculum and teachers. They do learn, or at least that is our hope. We also have lots of classes for adults. And we do hope to educate people. In many ways, we are like a school.

For others, a church is like a club, perhaps a social club or a service club. We have regular meetings. We have members and a process for joining. Members can become leaders in the church. We do lots of different things together, including service projects and social gatherings. At church, as in a club, we make friends and find a center for our socializing.

Many people today see the church as some kind of store. Small churches are like neighborhood markets; large churches are like department stores. Both churches and stores "sell" products. Both have professional staffs. Both "market" their wares in the community, hoping to attract interested "consumers." Larger churches, like larger stores, offer a wide array of "products." Smaller churches, like small stores, offer more personal service but fewer "products." If the church you attend provides what you're wanting to consume, you continue to go there. If that church stops meeting your needs, you think nothing of finding a better church, just as you might switch markets or clothing stores.

It's also common for people to see the church as something like a hospital. When you're physically sick, you go to a hospital to get well. Similarly, churches promise to help you overcome your spiritual ailments. Both hospitals and churches have professional experts to help you heal (doctors, pastors). Both hospitals and churches offer specialized treatments for particular ailments (in churches: singles groups, AA groups, etc.). Both hospitals and churches are staffed by people who care, or at least that's the way it should be. Many churches and hospitals even share similar names: St. Luke's Hospital/Church, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, etc.
		Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, California, where both of my children were born

All of these analogous institutions – concerts, schools, clubs, stores, and hospitals – are like churches in many ways. Thinking of a church in these categories makes sense, to a point. But to the extent that people see a church exclusively in light of these analogies, to that extent they misunderstand essential aspects of church life. For example:

• A church is like a concert, but it's better to see a worship service as a concert in which God is the audience and the worshippers are they performers, turning the concert imagery upside down.

• A church is like a school, but a church offers much more than religious and moral education. It seeks to transform people's hearts and lives, not just to educate their minds. And it seeks for join people together in life-changing community.

• A church is like a club, but unlike most clubs, membership isn't a privilege, but a gift, and non-members are welcome to participate in virtually every aspect of "club" life. A church, unlike a club, exists not just for its members, but especially for its non-members.

• A church is like a store, but it ought to do far more than offer "products" for consumption. A church will thrive only if its members are committed to the church in a way far beyond consumer loyalty.

• A church is like a hospital in that it offers healing to those who are spiritually sick, just like Jesus did. But a church is not like a hospital because it seeks, not only to get "patients" well, but also to enlist them on the caring team. When you go to a hospital, you're not expected to become a doctor or a nurse. When you got to a church, you should join the care-giving team as well as receive care.

Ironically, biblical teaching on the church is rather like what I've just laid out. Scripture uses analogies to reveal the essence of the church. Each analogy has certain strengths; each analogy also has certain limitations. So, for example, we'll soon see that the church is meant to be like a human body. But it is not meant to grow old and die in three or four generations. So it is both like a body and unlike a body. In the posts that will follow in this series I'll try to unpack the biblical analogies for the church. Taken together, these will reveal the true nature of the church from God's point of view.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

When a Church is not a Church, Section A
Part 6 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Tuesday, October 10, 2006

When I was young, I learned the little rhyme that goes like this: Here is the church, Here is the steeple, Open the doors, See all the people.

Of course it didn't dawn on me at the time that I was getting deficient theology. Only later in life did I realize that I should have learned a better rhyme:

Here is a building,
On top there's a steeple,
Open the doors,
The church is the people!

In my life I've probably heard a hundred sermons or teachings on the church. I've probably given a hundred more of my own. In virtually every one of these talks the same point is made: "The church is not a building. It's the people of God." Of course in common speech we refer to the place where Christians gather as a church. But this has nothing to do with biblical theology, and runs the risk of fostering a profound and detrimental misunderstanding.

Nowhere in the Bible is the place where Christians meet referred to as a "church." This word appears around 75 times in our English Bibles, depending on the translation (around 110 times if you include the plural). In almost every instance "church" is a translation of the Greek ekklesia (from which we get words like "ecclesiastical" and "Ecclesiastes"). Never does ekklesia refer to a building in which people gathered, for worship or for any other purpose. (In fact, the earliest Christians didn't even have special buildings in which to meet during the period in which the New Testament was written. This came much later. For the most part, the first Christians met in private homes.)

At this point you're probably commending me for my grasp of the obvious, or perhaps thinking about skipping this blog post altogether. But now's the time I take an unexpected turn. For I would argue that the use of "church" in our English New Testaments as a translation for ekklesia is problematic at best, and probably wrong. Yes, that's right. I'm saying that the word "church" should not appear 75 times in our Bibles, or 110 times including the plural. This, I fear, is a potentially misleading translation.

Now you might really be thinking even more seriously about skipping this blog post, since I'm now arguing a minority position versus almost every English Bible translation and Greek-English dictionary. But before you dismiss me as hopelessly eccentric, please allow me to defend myself.

No matter what connotation for the English word "church" you prefer, either the architectural one, the congregational one, or the institutional one, one thing is clear: "church" has religious connotations. A church is either a building used for religious purposes, or it is a group of people who have gathered for religious purposes, or it is a larger configuration of people who have been organized for religious purposes (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church). Say the word "church" and anyone who understands English will think "religious entity."

This was not the case for ekklesia in first-century Greek parlance. If, for example, a Christian traveler showed up on the streets of Corinth in the first-century A.D. and asked for the location of the ekklesia, nobody outside of the tiny Christian community there would direct him to a religious building or gathering. Nobody would think he was asking about anything that had to do with the gods or with religious practices. An ekklesia wasn't anything like a church. Greek had words for religious gatherings, words such as thiasos (cultic society) or synagoge (Jewish gathering). But ekkelsia wasn't one of these words.

Ironically, one might same the same thing for the use of the word ekklesia in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, abbreviated as LXX). This word appears about 100 times in the LXX, almost always translating the Hebrew term qahal. Both words, ekklesia and qahal, have the basic meaning of "assembly" or "gathering." They can be used to describe a gathering for religious purposes, but the words themselves don't have religious connotations. They need something like "of the Lord" to make the religious setting clear.

So, if "church" in English always suggests something religious, whether buildings or gatherings of people or organizations, and ekklesia does not have this meaning in the time when the New Testament was written, then translating ekklesia by "church" almost certainly leads to some level of misunderstanding on the part of the reader. When it comes to the vocabulary of the New Testament, truly "a church is not a church."

So, then, what is the New Testament understanding of ekklesia? If this word isn't equivalent to "church," what other English word or words might better render the sense of ekklesia? To these questions I'll turn in my next post.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

When a Church is not a Church, Section B
Part 7 of series: What is a Church? Biblical Basics for Christian Community
Posted for Wednesday, October 11, 2006

In my last post I argued something fairly commonplace: that the word "church," understood theologically, does not refer to buildings but to the congregations who use them. Then I argued something fairly unusual: that the English word "church" is a poor translation of the Greek word ekklesia, the word that is almost always rendered as "church" in English translations of the Bible. I explained that ekklesia in standard first-century Greek did not have a religious connotation, and therefore "church" smuggles in meaning that was not present in ekklesia. So, you might wonder, if "church" isn't the best translation of ekklesia, what might be better? I'll try to answer this question, first by looking at the ordinary meaning of the word ekklesia.

The Ordinary Meaning of Ekklesia

Almost all New Testament uses of ekklesia are distinctive in comparison to secular Greek, since ekklesia is almost always used to denote an usual gathering, that is, of believers in Jesus. In Acts of the Apostles, however, this term is used three times in a more or less ordinary sense, though perhaps ironically.