Table of Contents
It is not unusual for the modern use of a word to be quite removed from the meaning of that word in its biblical context(s). ‘Kingdom’, for instance, in modern use has an emphasis on ‘realm’ - the territory under a king’s rule - while in Scripture the word refers to the ‘reign’ or ‘rule’ of a king.
Alternatively, certain words in the Bible can attract the connotation of being ‘religious words’ for the simple fact that they drop out of everyday modern speech while being retained in church-life (because they’re in our Bibles). Yet in the original languages of the Bible, they weren’t religious words at all: they were simply the vernacular of the day. ‘Heaven’ would be one such example of this. It simply means ‘sky’, and there is nothing inherently religious about the word. But given that the Scriptures use it as a metaphor for God or his presence, the fact that we no longer use the word in secular speech , we think of heaven as a ‘religious’ word.
To make life more interesting, sometimes the change of meaning in a word and the relegation of a word to the ‘religious sphere’ can combine! ‘Faith’ is a key example, and, given the great importance of faith, vital for us to grasp. In modern English it is a religious term denoting ‘belief without evidence’, a leap into the dark. In the Bible, however, it is the normal everyday word ‘trust’, a trust given to what we are persuaded is true.
What does this have to do with church? Everything! For the word ‘church’ also reflects both of these changes from the original biblical meaning to our modern use of the word.
On the one hand, modern use of the word ‘church’ tends either to emphasise a physical structure (our service is held ‘in the church’) or a denominational entity (‘the Anglican Church’). Both of these modern uses are foreign to the Bible. In the Bible, ‘church’ simply translates the word ekklesia, which means ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’. The Hebrew equivalents are qahal and aedah, which are, funnily enough, translated in the Old Testament more clearly as ‘assembly’ or ‘congregation’: a gathering.
On the other hand, ‘church’ in English is used exclusively of Christian gatherings. In the New Testament, however, the word ekklesia, was not a religious word: it was a secular one. So, for instance, when the Ephesian citizens gathered to riot, Acts 19:32 uses the word ekklesia to describe them.
To return to the sources is always helpful, yet especially given the wider context of what we seek to achieve here in terms of strategic planning for the church. Once we understand church simply to be ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’, we are invited and compelled to ask: whose assembly? Gathering around whom or gathering for what purpose? Who initiates and instigates this assembly? What do the Scriptures say about its nature, purpose, and place in this world?
a religious word: it was a secular one. So, for instance, when the Ephesian citizens gathered to riot, Acts 19:32 uses the word ekklesia - ‘church’ - to describe them.
To ask how the Bible uses words is vital, and not least when it comes to theological reflection. We want to ask what God has to say about a particular topic, and it’s hard to do that if we subconsciously import our own meanings into the text. At best such activity makes us confused; at worst, the Scriptures become a mirror for our own thoughts rather transformative of those very thoughts.
And it’s essential for us to understand that any kind of vision-setting for the church must be grounded and founded in theological reflection: in other words, what God has to say about the nature and purpose of church. Once we understand that in Scripture ‘church’ simply means ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’, we are invited and compelled to ask: whose assembly? Gathering around whom and gathering for what purpose? Who initiates and instigates this assembly? What do the Scriptures say about its nature, purpose, and place in this world?
The Church in Salvation History
Once we understand church to mean ‘gathering’, the place of God’s church in salvation history takes on a whole new significance, since ‘gathering’ is central to God’s salvific purposes.
The story of God’s judgement on sin is one of separation and scattering. When Adam and Eve sinned, God cast them from the garden (Genesis 3:22-24). When Cain murdered his brother, he was cast out from God’s presence (Genesis 4:16). At Babel, God judged the people by scattering them across the face of the earth (Genesis 11:8-9). And key to the Old Testament, the exile of Israel and Judah is precisely that: God’s judgement expressed in scattering, casting out, and exclusion (2 Kings 17). In eternal judgement, exclusion from God and all his beneficence is reserved for those who have rejected him (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
If God’s acts of judgement involve scattering, the opposite is true of his plan of salvation. God’s intentions are to gather a people for his very own, a trusting remnant. It is first seen in the exodus, and it is here that the language of gathering is first firmly applied to the people of God. At Sinai God gathers a people to himself, out of all the nations of the earth, to be his treasured possession (Exodus 19:1-6). First the tabernacle, around which Israel camp, and then the temple, are symbolic of God’s presence amongst his gathered people. And gathering is the hope and promise for Israel after the exile (Deuteronomy 30:1-4).
This plan, promise, and hope of gathering in the Old Testament finds its fulfilment in Jesus. The shadows of the Old Testament - Israel gathered around Sinai, the camp gathered around the Tabernacle, and the temple in the midst of Jerusalem - find their reality in Jesus. In Jesus, God ‘tabernacled’ amongst his people (John 1:14). His body is the temple of God (John 2:19-22). Jesus is ‘Immanuel’: ‘God amongst us’.
At the cross Jesus gathers and unites a people in his body by his Spirit. He brings those who were far off and not a people, and makes them his very own, bringing them near (Ephesians 2:11-22; 1 Peter 2:10-12).
We are thus presently gathered - ‘churched’ - in the presence of God through Jesus, not Sinai or Old Covenant shadows, but ‘the heavenly Jerusalem’ (Hebrews 12:18-24). While this is a constant heavenly reality at present, it will be a constant physical reality also in the coming age, when ‘the dwelling-place of God will be with men’ (Revelation 20:1-7).
Church: Theological Formulation
First and foremost - and this can’t be overstated - we must understand that God’s church is God’s gathering. It’s defined by God, shaped by God, and gathered by God for God. It is not for us to determine the nature of God’s church, or, consequently, its mission. Church has one foundation: Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). The body of Christ is Christ’s body and we must acknowledge that he is its head (Colossians 1:18).
As mentioned previously, it is the Sinai event where the language of ‘church’ is first applied, especially in Deuteronomy. While it’s not the New Covenant church, it is the shadow thereof, highlighting with sharp edges the nature of church, what it is and isn’t.
The gathering at Sinai highlights that church follows salvation: first the exodus, then the gathering. One does not join church in order to be saved, one is included in church as the result of salvation. Church is the fruit of God’s saving grace, not essential to it. Having said that, however, church is not an optional extra: God’s gathering of his people around himself is the very heart of his purposes in this world.
Second, Sinai illustrates in emphatic fashion that the mode of God’s presence amongst his people is that of word (please note: despite claims to the otherwise this is not in exclusion of the Spirit. Word and Spirit in Scripture are inextricably linked. We can’t have one without the other). So at Sinai, Moses is at great pains to show that their experience of gathering around God was to listen to his voice. It is by listening to the Word that people meet God (Deuteronomy 4).
When the shadow fades with the advent of the New Testament reality, the same fundamentals of church remain. Belonging to the church is a consequence of the salvation worked by Christ – who is the Word of God (John 1:1-18). While in the church-temporal non-believers may be present in the meeting, the church spiritual (ie, in the presence of God now), the church consists only of believers.
We experience God’s gathering in the tension of the now-but-not-yet experience of this overlap of the ages: what we now have spiritually we await for physically in the new creation (see above). In either case, this church in the here-and-now is founded on the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as the chief cornerstone to be a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:11-22).
A basic definition of church, then, is this:
God’s people, gathered to God to be God’s people by God’s saving initiative, by agency of the Word of God, to dwell with God.
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the founding doctrinal statement of the Anglican Church, likewise states the priority of the Word of God, albeit including the sacraments (which it defines elsewhere as witnesses of the promises held in the word). It also introduces us to the idea of ‘the church visible’: the physical gathering of God’s people in the here-and-now to express, albeit dimly, what we have presently in the throne-room of God.
“The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.”
