Member-only story
God Believes in Organized Religion
Why and how God designed the church to be the body of Christ.
The Church is Not a Building
You may remember the ditty. With hands interlocked, index fingers meeting at a point, you’d begin, “Here is the church, here is the steeple.” Then, you’d turn your hands over, saying, “Open the doors and see all the people.”
That ditty may be sweet but it is theologically inaccurate.
Why?
Because the church is not a building; it is a people. The church is not a Sunday event we go to; it is a family we belong to.
Getting this backward has messed so many of us up.
The Ecclesia
The English word “church” in the Bible is translated from the Greek word, ekklesia, which means assembly or gathering. This is why the study of the church is called ecclesiology. Ekklesia-ology.
Ekklesia is a compound word formed by the Greek preposition ek (out of) and the verb kaleo (to call). This compound word for church teaches us that the church is a group of people from all tribes, nations, and languages who have been “called out” from the world to be disciples of Jesus.
