What Is the Church?

The English word church is related to the Scottish word kirk and the German designation kirche, and all of these terms are derived from the Greek word kuriakon, the neuter adjective of kurios (“Lord”), meaning “belonging to the Lord.”1 The English word church also translates the Greek word ekklesia, which is derived from ek, meaning “out of,” and kaleo, which means “to call”; hence, the church is “a called-out group.”

Ekklesia appears 114 times in the New Testament, 3 times in the Gospels, and 111 times in the epistles. In the Gospels it appears only in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17 (twice). The latter two occurrences are probably used in a nontechnical sense of a Jewish congregation. Thus in a technical sense, ekklesia is used only once in the Gospels, and in that passage it is a prophetic reference to the church. This helps establish the fact that the church began after the ascension as recorded in the book of Acts and is a particularly Pauline doctrine.

The word ekklesia, however, does not indicate the nature of the calledout group; it can be used in a technical sense of the New Testament church, or it can be used in a nontechnical sense of any kind of group. For example, in Acts 7:38 it refers to the congregation of the people of Israel as the ekklesia (it is translated “congregation”). In Acts 19:32 it refers to the mob at Ephesus that was angry at Paul (here it is translated “assembly”). Most often, however, the word is used in a technical sense to designate the New Testament church, a group of called-out believers in Jesus Christ.

Aspects of the Church

The local church. The most common use of the word church in the New Testament is to designate a group of believers that is identified as a local assembly or congregation. Thus there was a church in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1; 11:22), in Asia Minor (Acts 16:5), in Rome (Rom. 16:5), in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1), in Galatia (Gal. 1:2), in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:1), and in the home of Philemon (Philem. 2).

These early believers did not have special buildings in which to meet; instead, they met in homes (Rom. 16:5; Philem. 2). The early believers came together for worship (1 Cor. 11:18), fellowship (Acts 2:45–46; 4:31), instruction (Acts 2:42; 11:26; 1 Cor. 4:17), and for ministry such as sending out missionaries (Acts 13:2; 15:3). The result was that people were continually being saved (Acts 2:47).

The universal church. While the local church views the church as a group of believers gathered together in a particular locality, the universal church views “all those who, in this age, have been born of the Spirit of God and have by that same Spirit been baptized into the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13; 1 Peter 1:3, 22–25).”2 It was this corporate group of believers that Christ promised to build (Matt. 16:18); it was this Body for whom Christ died (Eph. 5:25), and He is the head over it, giving it direction (Eph. 1:22–23; Col. 1:18). In Ephesians 1:23 the church is referred to as “His body.” This cannot refer to a local assembly but must depict instead the universal body of believers (cf. Col. 1:18). A particular emphasis of the universal church is its unity. Whether Jews or Gentiles, all together compose one body, in a unity produced by the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 4:4).

The universal church is sometimes referred to as the invisible church and the local church as the visible church[1] (although some deny this equation). Men like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin all taught this distinction, which upheld the invisible church as emphasizing the perfect, true, spiritual nature of the church, whereas the visible church recognized the local assembly of believers with its imperfections and even unbelievers having membership in a local church. The term invisible is also used to indicate that its exact membership cannot be known. In reality, the members are entirely visible![2]

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[1] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 3:1043–48; cf. Douglas Kelly et al., eds., The Westminster Confession of Faith, 2nd ed. (Greenwood, S.C.: Attic, 1981), 44.

[2] Robert L. Saucy, The Church in God’s Program (Chicago: Moody, 1972), 17.