What is a Church?

I suppose that you could ask 100 people that question and get 75 different answers. It is amazing that such a common word as church could have so many different meanings. What is even more astounding is when people have personal definitions to words. You could ask a person for a definition of the word church and you would hear something like “the church, to me, means…” as if words do not have any meaning or can change from person to person. Or the they may struggle to even answer the question because it is too deep to define. Could you imagine treating any other word like that? For example, if you asked someone to define the word car and then they say “the word car, means to me…” or “the word care is so deep that it has many meanings.” Wouldn’t you find that to be odd? Then, on the other extreme of defining words, some words are so familiar that we have never even considered what the word means. Sometimes we assume we know what the word means, but if we were asked to write a definition of the word, we would be at a loss. You may have gone to church your whole life, but never stopped to ask yourself, what is a church?
The English word church is found 80 times in the Bible and the word churches 37 times. Christians should understand a word that is found so many times in the Bible. The better question would be “what does God mean by church?” rather than the common question, “What does the word church mean to me.” When God inspired the writers of the New Testament to pen the very Words of God, what did God mean? When speaking of church, some refer to denominations, others to buildings and some say the church means every saved person on earth. What did God mean when He said church?


God could have used any word that He wanted to use. God was not short on vocabulary, so whatever word we find is the exact word God wanted to use. I really do not enjoy hearing preachers say “what Paul really meant to say was…” or “what would have been better to say…” rather “this is what God said.” The first time the word church is used is in Matthew 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The word church is the word ἐκκλησία, (ekklēsia) in Greek, which was the language the New Testament was originally penned. The word ἐκκλησία means a called assembly. However, in many popular lexicon’s and dictionaries, the modern usage of the word has been inserted into their definition. I am afraid that many people put more authority on the work of one man who authored a lexicon, than in God’s word. As I hope to point out, merely because a man is an authority on the language, does not make him beyond reproof.

What I would also like to call attention to, for your deliberation, is that when you go to a dictionary or a concordance with Greek definitions, we are reading the authors definition of the word, not necessarily the meaning of the word at the time of its usage. Take, for example, Thayer’s Greek Definitions; he defines the word translated church as “a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly”. However, the definition doesn’t stop there, but he then goes on to define the word as “in a Christian sense… the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth”. That is a broad definition and illustrates the problem that we are going to have to face squarely as we go on. What does the word mean? Is Thayer correct in stating the Greek word ἐκκλησία was understood by those who spoke and wrote Greek in that time to mean “the whole body of Christians” or is that the definition he applies to what the word has become to mean? Strong’s defines the word as “a calling out, that is, (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (Jewish synagogue, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both): - assembly, church.” So Strong defines the word church with the word church. He has interjected his opinion into the definition. A.T. Robertson, in his work Word Pictures in the New Testament says “The word originally meant “assembly”, but it came to be applied to an “unassembled assembly”. W.E. Vine falls into the same trap when he defines ἐκκλησία. Vine says the word comes “from ek, out of and klesis, a calling was used among the Greeks of a body of citizens gathered to discuss the affairs of the State, Acts 19:39. In the Septuagint it is used to designate the gathering of Israel, summoned for any definite purpose, or a gathering regarded as representative of the whole nation. In Acts 7:38 it is used of Israel; in 19:32, 41 of a riotous mob.” Here Vine faithfully gives the meaning of the Greek word and the way the Greek word was understood by those living during the times. However, instead of bowing to the authority of God’s Word, he goes on to say “It has two applications to companies of Christians...” then applies the universal invisible body theory. This is interjecting our thoughts into God’s Word. It then becomes easy to declare that you believe every Word of God when you get to choose your own definition of the words. This same duplicity is applied to baptism as well.


The whole problem comes when we try to put our opinions into the word of God. We have men who believe that the church is universal and invisible; but the bible word for “church” means a called out assembly. Rather than conform to the authority of scripture we have generations of men who redefine the word rather than yield to it. When the book of Matthew was penned, there was a definition to the word ἐκκλησία. It had a common usage and a common definition. If Christ had meant to say a universal invisible group, why not say it? If I were to give a speech on television and I wanted to speak to all the Republicans in the United States how would I introduce the speech? I would address the Republican Party, I would not address the Republican assembly. Had Christ intended to speak of one who is a member of a community, then He too would have used a word that meant universal group of believers. But the fact is, Christ did not use a word that referred to a universal body over the whole world united by faith, but Christ spoke of an assembly. J.R. Graves in his book Old Landmarkism said “The Holy Spirit selected the Greek word ἐκκλησία, (ekklēsia) which had but one possible literal meaning to the Greek – that of a local congregation.” The universal church men would have you believe that God said local assembly, but meant universal invisible body, and that the meaning of the word was changed to something completely different without warning or redefining it.


William Tyndale in his translation of Matthew 16:18 rendered it this way, “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter: and upon this rock I will build my congregation. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” David Daniell, who wrote the introduction to the 1989 Yale University Press edition of the Tyndale Bible said “The Bishop of London hunted down and burned many thousands of Tyndale’s successive New Testaments and Pentateuch’s with fanatical thoroughness, a ruthlessness that seems close to hysteria – only a dozen in all survive. King Henry VIII’s chancellor, Sir Thomas More, showed himself less than gentile, reasoned, saintly and urbane in his long, and indeed violent polemics against Tyndale. He calls him in his Confutation, ‘a beast’, as one of the ‘hell-hounds that the devil hath in his kennel’, discharging a ‘filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish beastly mouth’. Elsewhere, More calls him a deceiver, a hypocrite; puffed up with the poison of pride, malice and envy’. Yet the best that More, in all the great length of his tirades, can summon against Tyndale, when all is boiled down, is the he translated the Greed word for ‘elder’ as elder, not priest and the Greek word for ‘repentance’ as repentance, not do penance, the Greek word for ‘congregation’ as congregation not church…Even Erasmus, More’s friend, had translated the Greek ἐκκλησία, as congregation, not church. Every change that Tyndale makes is more than defensible: it is correct.” Since we are not dealing with the denomination definition or what the English word has become; we are dealing with the meaning of the Greek words, the original meaning and intent of the word, then we must all admit the word ἐκκλησία, means assembly. That is the literal meaning of the word and that is what the writers of the New Testament meant, that is what the Holy Spirit inspired them to write. Had God wanted to use a word that categorized people by faith instead of using a word that means assembly, let us grant that God the Holy Spirit could and would have done so.


The word ἐκκλησία, means a called assembly. The Greeks used the word to mean called assembly. If the Holy Spirit used a word that was known and used for a local assembly, we must know that the Holy Spirit meant assembly. This must be our starting point. Everyone has an idea in their mind of what a church is, but we need to know what meant by the word. If you start here, and with what the word church means and go on through the biblical teaching, using the word as it was intended that you can clearly see the teaching of the Lord’s church without redefining words and using revisionist history. The Lord’s church is not an invisible, universal body, but a local assembly called for official business. Certainly there are other distinguishing marks of a church, but this is the most basic, is your church a church (ἐκκλησία)?


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Douglas Newell IV