What did Jesus mean by flippin’ ‘church’?

Now that we know how we got in a mess with this word ekklesia lets look at its use in the Bible. Jesus only uses the word ‘ekklesia’ three times in two verses, both found in Mathew’s Gospel and nearly always today translated as ‘church’:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it Matt 16:18

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector Matt 18:17

Both uses of ekklesia by Jesus are in a context where authority is an important issue. In the first passage Hell will not prevail against Jesus’ ekklesia and wrong doers must be dealt with by the ekklesia in the second occurrence. I will come back to this later on, but its obviously very important that we understand what Jesus meant by ekklesia when he used this very precise word.

What we have seen so far is probably not new to many of you. The standard understanding of many free churches like the Assemblies of God, the Baptists or Congregationalists is that ‘church’ comes from ‘ekklesia’. They have alluded to the classical Greek word ‘ekklesia’ which they understood to be taken from the root of the words, ‘ek -kaleo’ which simply means to ‘call out.’ So they and many others define church as ‘the called out ones’. Of course this begs the questions, called out from what, for what or to what? The answers given would vary on that group’s view of sanctification, but would usually be along the lines ‘the church is made up of those people who belong to Jesus and are therefore called out of the world to be holy for Him’. But is that it? Is that our definition of the church? A bunch of people called by Jesus to be holy? Is that what Jesus meant when He said ‘I will build my church and the gates of hades will not prevail against it’? The real question must now be, what did Jesus understand that he meant when he used the word ekklesia three times? First of all we should note that in New Testament times, outside of the Bible references, the word ekklesia was exclusively used to represent a group of people assembled together for a particular cause or purpose. It was never used exclusively to refer to a religious meeting or group.

Its well known that ‘ekklesia’ was used as early as the 5th Century BC and was derived from ek-kaleo, which was used as the summons to the army to assemble, from kaleo, to call. Hence why many churches today go for the ‘called out’ idea of church.

In the writings of Euripides (below) and Herodotus (5th cent. BC), we get some very real clues as to the meaning of ekklesia. 

The word was more often used to denote the popular assembly of the competent full citizens of a city. The ekklesia reached its greatest importance in those times and would have met at regular intervals (in Athens about 30-40 times a year) and also in cases of emergency. Incase you’re wondering how on earth so many people could meet as the ekklesia in Athens, I should point out that very few people counted as full and competent citizens of a city. The vast majority of the populace were slaves, tradesmen, women and children, none of whom were considered sufficiently worthy to be full and competent citizens. The ekklesia in Athens comprised about 400 men and made decisions on suggested changes in the law, on appointments to official positions and on every important questions of internal and external policy (contracts, treaties, finance). Interestingly, the meeting opened with prayers and sacrifices to the gods of the city.

So centuries before the translation of the Old Testament into Greek and even longer before the time of Jesus, an ekklesia was clearly a political body, making decisions which affected the safety and prosperity of that city. It was the assembly of full citizens, rooted in the constitution of the people, an assembly in which fundamental political and legal decisions were taken. Throughout all Greek areas the ekklesia was nearly always the assembly of the city’s great and good citizens. In fact, in the whole of the Greek writing of that time there are only 3 exceptional occurrences where it is used for the business meeting of a cult.

However, there were several words which regularly occurred in Greek writings of that time which could mean religious gatherings. Often the word ‘thiasos’ was used to mean an assembly to worship a god. A word used then which Christians today may recognise was ‘koinon’, which literally means, ‘that which is in common’, but we translate as ‘fellowship’. Another word was ‘synodos’, which again we hear today as a synod of the church etc, but which then meant a group following the same way, i.e. the same teaching. Significantly, however, none of these words were chosen by the apostles to mean ‘church’ in the New Testament. A word that is used in the New Testament is ‘synagogue’ to denote a place of meeting, but again this isn't used for ‘church’. Jesus didn't say I will build my thiasos, koinon, synodos or even synagogue, but my ekklesia! This is very important.

The flippin’ context.

Lets get back to the word the bible writers did use which was ekklesia. When we study scripture we must always read the passage in context. Which is how translators sometimes come up with a particular English word in one passage but a different word elsewhere when the same Greek word is used in both.

A classic example of this would be in Acts 11:5-9. In these five verses the same Greek words ‘tou ouranou’ are translated in three different ways. This is Peter’s dream of the sheet let down through ‘tou ouranou’ among them are birds of ‘tou ouranou’ and Peter hears a voice from ‘tou ouranou’ telling him to rise and eat. In some versions in verse 5 it’s ‘the sky’, in verse 6 ‘the air’, and in verse 9 ‘heaven’. It may seem bizarre that we go for three different words. Our English sky means something different to air and different again to heaven. The consistent translation would be to always use air or atmosphere.

When Bible translators looked at how to translate ekklesia, in some passages its the context which tells us who is meeting and therefore what English word we might use. Take Acts 19, the context of the passage tells us who is meeting. Acts 19:24f records that a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made idols, called all workman of like occupation together for a meeting. The reason for the meeting was to discuss the problem that they were having with people who were being saved and who were abandoning their idols, which was ruining the silver smith’s businesses. In these three verses ekklesia is the Greek word used, but its never translated ‘church’. Lets look and see why.

Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.

Acts 19:32

But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly.

Acts 19:39

And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly.

Acts 19:41

In these three verses ekklesia was used to refer to a civil assembly of the people of Ephesus which included idol makers. Remember the word ‘assembly’ is the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ and is the same word that is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as ‘church’. And just to make the point clear, not every English word ‘assembly’ is a translation of ‘ekklesia’ in our Bibles. Just four chapters later in Acts 23:7 we find ‘assembly’ is the translation of ‘plethos’ meaning a large crowd and in James 2:2 ‘assembly’ is the translation of ‘synagogue’.

We are beginning to see that an ekklesia wasn’t just any old assembly. As we have just found, there are plenty of Greek words which would have done the job. The word ekklesia carried a weight of authority in its use. Some might go so far as to say that it was a political term, but certainly not a religious term.

We have seen that in ancient Greece "ekklesia" meant an assembly of citizens summoned by the crier, who were the legislative assembly. Its very interesting to note that in Israel the legislative assembly was originally composed of the elders of each family group. The elders sat at the city gates making judgements and pronouncements and watching what came in and went out of the city. The authority in Israel was originally in the hands of the elders, they didn’t usually gather together to overthrow the corrupt government, because, in a sense,  they were the government. However, once Israel asked God for a king, who in turn appointed officials over the people, the role of the elders changed to be very similar to the Greek ekklesia.

But just because we have worked out what a word might have meant in its early usage doesn't mean that that is what Jesus and the apostles understood by its meaning a few hundred years later. We must ask ourselves if the context of their use of ekklesia fits with the theory. So lets go back to the three times Jesus uses ekklesia in Matt 16:18-20 and 18:15-20. Clearly these passages are about authority being exercised, firstly against Satan and then in the second instance with man. It makes every sense to see that Jesus did indeed think of ekklesia as a legislative authority of some sort.

Next time I want to take a quick look at what the Romans made of ekklesia in the time of Jesus.

What is a flippin’ church anyway?

I guess that the word ‘church’ conjures up lots of images in most peoples minds. When my oldest daughter was about 7 she was given home work to draw a picture of a church. At that time our church met in her school’s hall so this presented her with a problem. We talked about it and I told her that we believed that the church was the people and not a building, so she drew a picture of lots of people. 

Needless to say it wasn't what the teacher was after! But for many people, even Christians, the building with a spire at the corner of the street is a church. Other people talk about going into the church, meaning someone who has become a priest or minister. Others ask questions of the church, meaning they want to know what the Head Quarters think on a subject. But for most Christians they would tell you that on Sunday mornings they go to church, meaning they go to a service of some kind or other. So is church the people, the building, the HQ or the service, or is it a combination of some of these things?

May I suggest that to begin a brand new journey looking at all of the places we have already been won’t get us to our desired destination. If I plan to go to the USA, looking at my holiday snaps from Greece or my guide book from France, isn’t going to help me at all. What I would need would be a map and guide books of the USA. So to answers my question about what the flippin church is by looking at what it looks like now, isn’t going to help us find the real church. We must begin with the guide book of all guide books, the Bible.

In the introduction I mentioned that the word church is found in 106 verses of the New Testament. In fact ‘church’ isn’t found in the Old Testament at all. But I’m already not telling you the truth. The word ‘church’ isn’t in the bible at all, Old or New Testament! Now before you burn this book as total heresy let me qualify what I mean. The Greek word which we translate as ‘church’ in our New Testaments is ‘ekklesia’, its where we get our English word ecclesiology (meaning the study of the church) from.

I said that ‘church’ isn't in the Old Testament at all, but in fact the word ‘ekklesia’ is found in the Old Testament on several occasions.

In 280BC, seventy two men translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.  We call this Greek Old Testament the Septuagint. In this Greek version of the Old Testament, ekklesia is translated as ‘the congregation’ of Israel, as in:

Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great (ekklesia) assembly, from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of Egypt, before the LORD. 1 King 8:65

God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a (ekklesia) company of peoples. Gen 28:3

In the Old Testament, ekklesia is always a name for the people being gathered or identified. Jesus and the apostles would have known this. So when we come to the New Testament its very interesting how the writers use this word ‘ekklesia’ which is found in 115 places in the New Testament. In the King James Version it’s translated into English 112 times as ‘church’ and the remaining 3 times it is translated ‘assembly’.

When we take out a map of the USA to plan a journey we would be foolish if we looked at Alabama and saw that there was a Birmingham there and assumed that the Birmingham in Alabama was anything like the one we have in the West Midlands of England, but that is exactly what many do when we read our bibles, not least when attempt to understand what God means by church. We must not be tempted to read how we experience church now into the Bible's use of ekklesia, but ask “What did Jesus and the Bible’s writers mean when they used the word ekklesia?”, when we come to define church today. To clear the ground and get to this point, we need to first know how we got to where we are today with our translation of ekklesia as ‘church’ and not ‘assembly’ or ‘congregation’.

Flippin’ Translations

If you look in a good English dictionary you will find that the English word ‘church’ is not taken from the Greek word 'ekklesia' but from ‘kyridakon'. What is astonishing is that ‘kyridakon’ isn’t found in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, it only came into being as a word in the 16th Century! So the English word ‘church’ can’t be translated back into Greek because there is no word in the New Testament Greek that is the equivalent of the understanding of the English word. There are crime novels with less intrigue than this!

If you have never exclaimed ‘flippin’ church’ before, you will most definitely do so now. What on earth is going on? How did we get this flippin’ word ‘church’?

To see what happened we need to look at a time when Christians were indeed killing one another in the name of Jesus, but first lets go back much further to the fourth century AD when St Jerome translated the manuscripts he had, which were in Greek, into the lingua franca of the known world, Latin. The boy done good, so good in fact that until the late 14th century we had no other bibles but the Latin Vulgate, and certainly no chance of having one in English.

Then along came John Wyclif the Master of Bailiel College, Oxford. He set the authority of the Bible against the authority of the Pope, but equally important and more so for our journey is that he translated the Latin Bible into English. Although Wyclif died a natural death in 1384, his followers were violently opposed by those who did not want English language Bibles and so the Roman Catholic church had his body dug up and burned and his ashes scattered on the river Swift. See how these Christians loved one another!

Now Wyclif was a great man of God, but he was only translating from the Latin Bible with all of St Jerome’s errors from the fourth century. Nevertheless, you can just imagine Wyclif writing out the whole thing by hand (it was 70 years before the invention of the printing press) and trying to find the right words. I’m not sure if Wyclif knew that he was setting light to a slow burning fuse to a huge powder keg, but that’s exactly what he did. The fuse burned until 1526 when William Tyndale fanned it into flame with his new translation into English, but using the then (thanks to printing) newly available Greek text. The English bishops objected to the translation into English and so Tyndale, who had been working in Europe for fear of being arrested,  was caught and executed at the age of 42 in 1536 by order of Charles the Fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Now you are probably thinking, this is all very well and good Paul, but you have strayed way away from ekklesia, what is your point? Ah, I’m so glad you asked me. My point is that Tyndale and his contemporaries chose to translate ekklesia as ‘congregation’ and not ‘church’. In fact all of the next generation of translators followed suit. During the reformation in England the word ‘church’ wasn't found in the bibles used, but later King James the First of England wanted a new Bible, authorised by him and that one translated ‘ekklesia’ as ‘church’.

The English word ‘church’ was in common usage throughout this time for the Holy Catholic church and the large organised protestors against Rome, like the Lutheran churches. The word ‘church’ for a local congregation was first used by Theodore Beza in 1556, a protestant, who was a follower of John Calvin. As a Presbyterian, Beza believed in the idea of a catholic church and its hierarchal form of government and therefore chose to support this false concept by using the word ‘church’ instead of ‘assembly’ or ‘congregation’ when translating ekklesia. He understood what Birmingham, England was like and made it a model for what the Alabama city must be like. Thus causing centuries of chaos for visitors going there. If you see what I mean.

But it doesn't matter what I mean. The question we will look a next time is what did Jesus mean when he said "I will build my church"?

Introduction to the Flippin Church

There are probably very few things in this world more known about, but less understood, than the church. 

Within Christianity there are more arguments about the church than any other subject. Many times in our history one part of the church or other has slaughtered those who dare to disagree with them on even minor doctrinal matters. Still today families break up because of church, and good friends become enemies over night.

The question which I have wrestled with, even before I became a Christian, is “How come we get it so wrong?” After all, there are only 109 mentions of church in 106 verses in the English Standard Version of the New Testament. Surely we must be able to distill something we can all agree on from those verses.

The subject of church has fascinated me all of my life. My family were not church goers at all, although my two brothers and I were ‘christened’ in a local Methodist chapel. My father came from an Exclusive Brethren family who, when I was five years old, followed their leader’s teaching which provoked my grandparents and three aunts, along with all of their families, to cease any relationships with anyone outside of their church, which included us. Overnight, we felt the very great pain of being effectually cut off from all of my fathers relatives! Oddly my brothers and I were sent to a local Church of England primary school where daily assemblies meant a crocodile of children walking to the parish church for a communion service first thing every morning. At different times the three of us also joined the local Boys’ Brigade run by the Methodist chapel. In my last year at primary school I was made a server at the daily communion service where I wore a red cassock and white ruff. By the time I reached secondary school I could have told you a lot about church, but everything I knew was entirely contradictory and certainly didn't lead me to think about God, let alone Jesus Christ and his love for me.

As you read this you will probably think that, with all of this early contact with all kinds of church, God must have had his hand on my life. I couldn't agree with you more, but I was too blind to see it. Only a few years later I met my wife to be, Ruth, who was a christian and belonged to the local United Reformed Church. If I wanted to see Ruth on any given Sunday morning it meant going to her church. The plus factor of the URC over my Methodist and Church of England experiences was that the building was warm, light and modern. Apart from that, and Ruth aside, there were no obvious attractions for me and I would still say that for me, although Jesus was mentioned in the hymns, readings, prayers and sermons, neither the meetings or church members communicated that Jesus was alive and, was truly Lord.

Now I have to be fair to those saints who were part of the churches I had experienced as a young man. They were never pushy and were nearly always sincere, friendly and welcoming to me, but so were the people down at the local pub or in the various bands I played with. Church just seemed a duller version of life than the one I was looking for.

When Ruth and I married we tried to go to church most Sundays depending on where I was stationed in the Royal Air Force. Most often it would be the chapel on the RAF base, but sometimes it would be a local town’s URC. Nevertheless, my view of church was only reinforced by these largely dull encounters. Most of these churches and chapels were made of up of very similar people who did much the same type of stuff. Looking back it was truly amazing how much they let me do in their fellowships. I got to read the lessons, say written prayers, hand out hymn books, help with sunday school, talk to youth groups, serve communion and man stalls at fetes and jumble sales. What fun we all had, these Christians and me the confused agnostic! But all of this changed very rapidly in 1982 when, shortly after the Falklands war, a new Chaplain was posted to RAF Marham where I was stationed in Norfolk at the time.

To cut to the chase, I became a Christian. I was utterly convinced of God’s love for me demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I won’t go into the details of my conversion here, that’s for another time, but what was remarkable about my coming to faith was that it felt like God put something inside me that day, a vision which I couldn't quite see, and certainly wouldn't begin to be able to articulate for many years, which was about church. It was almost as though he had down loaded a blueprint for church which would be revealed to me from time to time so that I got tantalisingly brief glimpses of the plan. Not clear enough views for me to immediately build what I saw, but detailed and exciting enough for me to know that I was aiming for something very different to the church I had experienced up until that point.

Over the rest of my life so far, God has been revealing to me what that church looks like. Sometimes its been whilst praying and reading scripture, at other times its come through listening to sermons, or going to conferences, or reading books, but most often it has come through talking with people. As we have chatted its been like something inside of me, deep down, has understood and a light has come on. My problem with this has been twofold. Firstly how to put into words what I am seeing and secondly how to connect the various parts of the picture so that it makes sense when put into practice in a local Christian fellowship.

In 1987 I left the RAF and went to college to train for ministry in the URC. When I was ordained I went straight back to the RAF as a chaplain where, in the Forces environment, I was able to build church as I understood it. 

As the years past and I became more aware of the vision of the church God had given me, I tweaked and changed various things, but this usually resulted in something else not fitting. It wasn’t unlike my attempts at doing a Rubicks cube. Change one side, but then the others don’t match anymore. With the cube I would end up throwing it down (I have never completed it), but with church it merely caused me to seek how to fix the next bit. And so round and round I have gone, and have taken with me some very patient and loving Christians to whom I owe a tremendous debt and huge apologies as they have put up with my tweaking.

Some of the sides of the church Rubicks cube that I have been twisting and turning have been, ministry, authority, congregation, legislation, unity, relationships, scripture, and other less obvious faces. One thing is clear to me now, the Bible has a great deal to say about church, but what we have built over the last 2,000 years has little to do with it. Nevertheless, God in his wonderful grace and mercy hasn’t abandoned us and will never do so. Jesus loves his flippin’ church!

Over the next few weeks I want to explore my thoughts on church through history, the bible, the church today and the world we live in. I welcome your thoughts as I post.