what is church

How is it that I have been going to church for most of my life, am training at seminary for the ministry and am only just asking myself the question, ‘what is church’?  Why is it that question has never entered my head before?  Thanks to David Watson in I Believe in the Church, I now have the following information on which to build:

 The Greek word Ekklesia and means ‘those called out and summoned together by a herald’.  The New Testament uses the word in 4 different ways.

1. the universal church or the entire company of believers
2. the local church such as the one at Corinth
3. the assembly of believers in any place
4. a small group of believers

Here’s his expansion of these four categories 

• Called out- the church comes from God and belongs to God.  Just as the kingdom of Israel was called out of Egypt and taken safely across the desert to the land of promise, we are also delivered through a sovereign act of God to be his own possessions.
• Called for- just as under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, we are called to have a relationship with God
• Called together – our calling is not private.  Church is a corporate and not an individual experience.  just as others were to be blessed through Abraham all we are to bless in turn.  We are also called together to be in relationship with one another and not just have a ‘nodding acquaitance’ with one another once a week.
• Called to – the spirtual lives of those ‘called out’ is to mirror the physical journey the Kingdom of Israel made through the desert. This journey is to be continually moving forward and is not static. 

It was at this final point that I had a little giggle to myself and thought back to the discussions that have arisen in class over the past couple of weeks.  It was the predictable discussion about what women are to wear in church (along with restrictions on women preaching in church). 

Watson has said that the church should be dynamic, a  people on the move.  It must never become a people that settles down in the wilderness and it should not look back or “cling onto the past and hold to forms and structures that were meaningful yesterday.  In terms of music, language and dress…”. 

Unfortunately, that is all to often what the church does do.  In too many churches there is a never ending discussion about going back to some golden era where women behaved a certain way, dressed a certain way and were happy to be preached at, tell the children’s story or take children’s sabbath school.  The conversation of dress and attire are still going on and they have become a distraction from worship and have got in the way of many people having a committed relationship with God and, as long as that conversation goes on, we forget that we have been called out to have a special relationship with him and with one another and to mirror God so that others can see come to know him also.