As a Theologian, I fear that our view of the church is too narrow and too misleading that most of us think the church is a building and that is why we are so focused on building prestigious religious buildings, thereby wasting time and resources anointing and mystifying these structures, at the expense of individuals in them. When it comes to how we construct structures for worship, we are too creative and active. That is why no church building project has ever failed.
Modern churches and the worshippers in these churches remind me of Rwanda, my motherland, where the streets look better and cleaner than the citizens who walk on them. It is a paradox to have a crystal-clear glass and prestigious building for worship and have dirty, clogged and cloudy worshippers in it. You see, practice is guided by meaning. The meaning we make of words and symbols determines our practice.
When healthy exercise turns into body building at the expense of brain building, the strong muscles may end up leading us to all sorts of criminal activities. I see modern churches focused on good buildings at the expense of right Theology and I marvel. You see, good buildings with poor or wrong Theology is the same as body building at the expense of brain building. When you build a good church but with a wrong Theology, the pastor and the worshippers in there become bouncers who hit others against the walls and eventually throw them out.
If we look at church as a building or in the lenses of materialism, then our definition is poor and misguided and therefore our actions cannot be any better. The word ‘Church’ is an English word and I think it is important for us to begin from this point of view and discuss the etymological meaning of the word. The word. “Church” comes from the Old English and German word pronounced “kirche.” In Scotland, it was “kirk.”
Now when you read from the Oxford Universal English Dictionary, you will get the following entries:
Church [Old English cirice, circe; Middle English chereche, chiriche, chirche; whence churche, cherche, etc.: -Greek Kuriakon…] Kirk The Northern English and Scottish form of CHURCH, in all its senses.
Now two things we must understand is that language evolves with time. However, for a language not to perish, it must maintain its symbolic meaning.
What I am saying here is that before the English people coined their word ‘Church’ the Greeks had their own word ‘Kuriakon’ from which the English word ‘Church’ has its roots. So the word ‘Church’ is a translation for the Greek word ‘Kuriakon’. In the earlier Greek, It was pronounced “ku-ri-a-kos” or “ku-ri-a-kon.” The meaning of “Ku-ri-a-kos” is understood by its root: “Ku- ri-os,” which means “lord.”
Thus, “kuriakos” can mean two things:
- “pertaining to the lord.”, and
- Related to the Lord. It refers to something that pertains to or belongs to, a lord. (This Lord is also debatable, but I will come to that).
The Greek “kuriakos” eventually came to be used in Old English form as “cirice” (Kee-ree-ke), then “churche” (kerke), and eventually “church” in its traditional pronunciation.
A Church, then, is correctly something that “pertains to, or belongs to, a lord.”. Now you must be careful as you attend churches, always find out who is the Lord of that church. When you see a church labeled with my name, let’s say: ISAIAH-WHITE MINISTRIES, then get to know who the Lord is.
Well, as you heed that warning, let’s go back to our word. As you can see, this word doesn’t even resemble the Greek word “ecclesia” whose place it has usurped. The church is not a building, the Greek word translated as ‘church’ is ‘Ecclesia’ which means an assembly of people. It is this concept that the New Testament writers borrowed from the political world and shared as a church.
Did you know that the Greek word ‘kuriakos’ which is the English word for ‘Church’ actually only appears in the New Testament two times? It is found once in I Corinthians 11:20 where it refers to “the Lord’s supper,” and once again in Revelation 1:10 where it speaks of “the Lord’s day.” In both of those cases, it is translated “the Lord’s..,” not “church.”
We know of other verses that have the word church in our bibles. If the New Testament was translated from the Greek Language, what Greek word then do these English versions translate if it is not ‘kuriakos’ as we have seen? I will tell you the word, it is ‘Ecclesia’ “Ecclesia” is an entirely different word with an entirely different meaning than “kuriakos.”
We must emphasize the importance of knowing word meanings in order to know the intent of those who wrote the Scriptures. Ecclesia appears in the New Testament approximately 115 times. That’s just in this one grammatical form. It appears also in other forms. And in every instance, except three, it is wrongly translated as “church” in the King James Version. Those three exceptions are found in Acts 19:32, 39, and 41.
In these instances, the translators rendered it “assembly” instead of “church.” But, the Greek word is exactly the same as the other 112 entries where it was wrongly changed to “church“. The Greek word “ecclesia” is correctly defined as: “The called-out (ones)” ‘ek’ which means ‘out’; and ‘Kaleo’ which means ‘call’. Thus, you can see how this word was used to indicate a civil body of select (called, elected) people.
Generally speaking, the two words of kuriakos and ecclessai help us appreciate the meaning of what we call the church should actually be. Firstly, it must be an assembly of people called out from the crowd or wherever for a specific noble mission. Secondly, this assembly must not belong to any individual or institution but the Lord.
This assembly can be defined in terms of two categories: (a) the local church and (b) the church universal. The “local church” is understood as that body of believers who gather regularly in one place. The “universal church” consists of all believers in every place and in the whole course of world history.
The Apostle Paul put it better when he wrote these words in 1Corinthians 1:2: To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ–their Lord and ours.
According to Paul, there are three characteristics that a true church is defined by:
- “To the church of God in Corinth”. In Corinth, there could many other churches but Paul specifically addresses that which belongs to God = Te ecclesia tou theou. I warned you earlier, be careful of who the church you subscribed to as a member belongs to.
- “Those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling,” There is no self-sanctification, it is not people who have fixed themselves but rather those whose sanctification is in Christ. They are not right living by themselves but rather by the grace of Jesus Christ. They are not perfect and neither do they have the merits to judge others, they are all in Christ.
- “All who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ both their Lord and ours” Now here Paul is very careful. He recognizes every believer around the world but not all those who call upon the name of Jesus. Paul specifically becomes exclusive with the Lord and says “all those who call upon the same Jesus we call upon”. Not just any Jesus but this very Jesus we are talking about. He said ‘epikaloumenois to onoma tou kuriou emwon’.
Paul considers those in other places he doesn’t know, who are not calling upon any other Jesus but the very Jesus he is talking addressing here. That is the relationship between the genitive plural pronoun of ‘emwon’ which means our and the verb participle of call upon. So whenever you go to church that has banners of Jesus and they are singing Jesus and they are saying JESUS-JESUS-JESUS, remember that Jesus himself said in Mathew 24:5 that:
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And he also said in verse 24 that: For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Jesus again finally warned all of us that:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Mathew 7:21.
Now as you can see, the church is not a building but rather an individual or individuals called out to belong to the Lord. We should stop minding the building more than we care for the body of Christ. The church is not the place which is kept holy by keeping sinners away. It is the place where newly born sinners are brought so that they can learn the Scriptures and grow in their faith and be sanctified in the Lord.
All too often, new believers feel unwelcomed in our worship places. The administrators are always afraid that sinners will taint the reputation of their worship places and they kill these sinners before they kill the image of the so-called church. Let us not strive to preserve the purity of the church by keeping out the newly saved pagans. Let us strive to preserve the purity of the church by throwing out some of the professing saints who boast only of the time they have put in at the church but whose profession of faith is hypocritical.
And this does not mean that as a pastor I entertain a sinner or even their sinning. This does not mean that the church is some hiding place for indulgent sinners. No and no way. In fact, the church is a detector of sin and it is a place of condemnation of sin.
We must in our worship places condemn and fight sin but forgive and exercise love towards repentant weak sinners. The church is not the place where we go to escape from sin; it is the place where we go to confront our sin and to stimulate each other to love and good deeds.
The church is not a Christian “clean room” where we can get away from sin; it is a hospital, where we can find help and healing through the ministry of the Word and prayer.
Pr. I.T.WHITE
THE GOSPEL HAWKER
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