I've heard the claim a number of times that "the origins of the word 'church' point to a place of worship." On r/askRPC a user asked if it's a biblical command to attend a weekly service. Other similar issues arise frequently, so let's talk about this.

"Church" is NOT Derived from Ekklesia

You heard me right. "Church" is one of the translations we have given to the word Ekklesia, but that's not the etymological root. The word we derived "church" from is actually German: Kirche. Some suggest that this may have come from the ancient Greek Kuriakon (or sometimes conjugated Kuriakos).

  • Kirche in the German referenced a building or location.

  • Kuriakon in the Greek generally means "belonging to a lord."

It's not hard to see how some people would confuse the location of the church with something belonging to God. After all, even the Jews before the cross understood the notion of devoting land and property to God (Mark 7:9-13, for example). That said, anyone looking at the two can obviously see that the two words split significantly in their definitions and historical use.

The latter is only used twice in the Bible, and never as a reference to the church. The first is in 1 Cor. 11:20 regarding eating "the Lord's supper." The other is in Revelation 1:10, referencing "the Lord's day." Note, of course, the comparison with Kyrios (sometimes Kurios), which is the Greek for "lord" and often used to reference Jesus throughout most of the epistles.

The Original Ekklesia

When talking about the Church, there are two Greek words that are translated as such: Ekklesia and Koinonia.

Koinonia is the word used to describe the spiritual connectivity of the Church. It is generally used to reference a oneness bond existing throughout a group. It's where we get the word "communion" from, as the KJV translated it that way and the word stuck. During "communion" we share a oneness with Christ. In the same way, Koinonia references, on occasion, the oneness that exists among a body of believers - that we are united in Christ, despite being different members of a singular body.

Ekklesia (or Ecclesia) is the word used to describe the structure of the church. It had an established meaning in the Greek language. While "church" to us seems like a uniquely religious word that predominantly applies to Christians, that wasn't the case for Ekklesia in the Greek language that most of the new testament was written in. It was a commonly understood term for a political (arguably military) structure. There are councils, senates, committees, ekklesias, and so on.

  • Thought Experiment 1: Imagine this: in general life among your Christian friends, instead of the church the translation was "senate" and that's the word we used regularly. How would that change your perception of things? "Sorry, I can't hang out on Sunday because I have a Senate meeting." "I love my Senate." "You should go to Senate more often." "The Senate is Christ's bride." This has a massively different connotation to what we understand about the Church today, right? This is how the Greek-speaking population would have read the word - understanding, of course, that the reference was to the spiritual Kingdom, not the physical body that met in Athens.

The original ekklesia was a fascinating event, arising even before Daniel's time, meeting as early as 621BC. The Greek Empire in those days had a form of democracy that involved a popular assembly called an Ekklesia. A few relevant details:

  • There were not many Ekklesias. There was only one. It referred to a unified assembly of the entire Kingdom, and not merely individual local assemblies throughout the Kingdom (which also existed by different names).

  • It was not only comprised of willing participants of the entirety of the Kingdom; all people in the Kingdom were bound by it! ... even if they were not present or did not agree (i.e. were in the voting minority).

    • It was not a mandatory meeting. While attendance was encouraged, there was no expectation of attendance.
    • A quorum of no less than 6,000 people had to participate in any votes or else it was rendered moot or the meeting would be cancelled.
    • To encourage attendance, a per diem was given to all who participated: 1.5 drachma for special ekklesias and 1 for the ordinary. A drachma was roughly a day's wages.

  • It focused not on teaching the attendees how to be "good little boys and girls." Rather, it was viewed as a business meeting. The people voted on issues related to Kingdom expansion - do we go to war? Send a diplomatic envoy to a neighboring Kingdom? Shall we ratify a treaty? Who do we appoint to keep rebels and criminals from destroying the country from within?

  • This one's the must humorous to me: it met outside on a plain and not in a building.

I do not believe that in borrowing the word, Jesus or the apostles necessarily intended us to model the Greek structure of the Ekklesia exactly. Rather, I believe they were intending to convey, "Hi all you Greek-speakers. You remember those Ekklesia meetings you've been having all these years? Well, what I'm referring to is kind of like that, but based on the way Christ set it up rather than the way the Greeks set it up." This is pretty much the same thing Paul did in Acts 17 when preaching the Gospel with reference to the "unknown god" statute in Athens - find something not necessarily identical, but close enough that it conveys the point, while giving room for preaching God's intentions through that vehicle.

That said, I do believe the functional nature of the Ekklesia was part of the connection Jesus and the apostles were trying to make.

  • Thought Experiment 2: Imagine if instead of the Ekklesia Jesus referred to our modern Congress, which is probably the closest thing we have to the Greek Ekklesia in America (with some significant differences). Now, consider the function and structure that this word-association would generate today. Can you imagine being told to build a Congress for the Church and instead coming up with the local congregational structure we now have and calling that our "congress"? Of course not. Virtually everyone alive today would know that what we do is neither structurally nor functionally anything like the American Congress from which the word would have been borrowed. In the same way, I'm confident that anyone alive in Jesus's day would look at our modern structure and say, "That's not an Ekklesia. You all are crazy."

Now, I've already noted that it's not meant to be a perfect comparison. Christ's Ekklesia is certainly distinct in many ways from the Greek ekklesia. But if we strip away our modern notions of the word "church" and, instead, place ourselves in the shoes of a brand new believer in the apostles' day who knew nothing about what Jesus taught and hadn't read the epistles and only heard that there was an ecclesia of Christ, here's what one might assume about it:

  • The Church should meet corporately and universally, not only locally and divided (if it would meet locally/divided at all).

  • There should be a singular, united structure for the Church, not numerous branches/denominations.

  • The Church should not be tied to or associated with a building or location, but understood as the assembly of the people, meeting wherever is convenient.

  • The purpose of the meeting is to decide matters of policy and vote on military matters, primarily affecting Kingdom expansion.

  • There would be no expectation of teaching on how to be "good little boys and girls" (which would have been taught by discipler-makers within the Church).

  • It would include appointing magistrates to judge and condemn those who would internally present a threat to the Kingdom, such as through promoting heresies.

  • It would discuss policies on what types of bridges/treaties to build with those outside the Kingdom (i.e. the intermingling of "church and state").

  • It would financially provide to the attendees rather than be a financial drain on them.

Now, I'm not suggesting the Church should incorporate all of these things. Again, this is just a picture of what someone in that day may have imagined based on that word alone. But it does get our brains realizing that we are WAAAY more unlike the Greek ekklesia than we are like to it.

Ekklesia Participation

Here's another fascinating point: the Ekklesia had restrictions on who could attend, speak, participate in votes, etc. It was limited to every (a) free, (b) native, (c) adult, (d) male (e) citizen in the entire empire was invited to attend and vote on certain issues. Consider these requirements in light of what we see in Scripture about participation within the Church. It would be limited to those who were

  • (a) free - not enslaved by sin

  • (b) native - born ("again" in the John 3 sense) into the Kingdom

  • (c) adult - spiritually mature

  • (d) male - i.e. not women

  • (e) citizen - i.e. primary allegiance is to the Kingdom, not another country.

Interestingly, I could point to a number of Scriptural passages that would imply that this is the framework the apostles had for how the Church should be run, at least from a leadership, decision-making standpoint.

CONCLUSION

While the Greek ekklesia is not a perfect parallel to what Jesus and the apostles were building, that word was chosen over other structures at the time that would have been more alike to what we see in churchianity today. This tells me that Jesus and the apostles had a more Kingdom-building understanding of what the Ekklesia of Christ. While I won't conclude the parallels should all apply, what I AM willing to conclude from this is that the Church is not meant to be a place for people to come, hear a nice little lesson, ponder a quotable phrase for a few hours, and get on with their week. It's meant to be a strategy and planning session for how we get the Gospel out to the world - which is how the war will be won.