Why Gather?
Since the first days of the COVID-19 shutdowns, the surrounding stress and chaos has acted as an agent of revelation. In many ways, stress does not create negative attitudes or false expectations, it simply reveals them. In a similar way, COVID-19 has acted as an agent of revelation with regard to some inherent theology that sits at the core of many Jesus followers and many churches. Issues like the sovereignty of God and end times theology are being debated ad nauseam over the internet. But perhaps no theological topic has been more prominently pondered during this season than that of ecclesiology. A word that means the study of The Church.
As state and CDC restrictions and guidelines across the country, and really the world, have forced many churches to adjust how they operate, or even if they operate at all, many believers and churches have inadvertently declared their own personal belief around what the word “church” means. Now aside from theology proper (the study of God), Christology (the study of Christ), Pneumatology (the study of The Spirit) and Soteriology (the study of salvation), there may not be a more important discipline of one’s systematic theology than Ecclesiology (the study of The Church). And without knowing it, each one of us has been engaging in some heavy internal debate about our own ecclesiology. “How so?” you ask. By debating whether or not your church should remain open during pandemic restrictions and whether or not you should attend, you have been debating and declaring your own personal ecclesiology. And to be sure, even with the most well-vetted ecclesiology, many of you might arrive at differing practical decisions on your own attendance, as I hope to show in this blog series. For that reason, we need to have continued grace for one another in this area.
Our heart, as your elders, is to help you become the most fully aware disciples that each of you can be, and that is increasingly extending into the area of ecclesiology. Our recent town hall meeting regarding our thoughts on the recent COVID restrictions was an extremely gracious and loving discussion, and we are so thankful to each of you for that. At the same time, we saw coming out of that meeting an opportunity to help each of you process through your own ecclesiology and to establish for you what we believe the Bible speaks to with regard to the importance of The Church, and by extension, the weekly gathering of its members. So over the next few blog posts, I will be sharing with you some thoughts that I would ask you to research on your own, pray over, and meditate on. Perhaps it will alter your opinion, perhaps not. But we can be assured at the end of this collective journey that we each did our best to, as the old King James Version puts it, “…study to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).”
What Is The Meaning Of The Word “Church”?
Now that we have introduced the topic, let’s take our remaining space in this first post to think through “What is [T]he [C]hurch?” The reason that I put the “T” and “C” of that question in brackets is because we need to first clarify whether we are talking about “The Church” in terms of all Christians everywhere and at all times, or any given local expression of “The Church” in a given geography and time. Let me explain what I mean. “The Church” is a name and designation for the overall collective number of saints that have been saved by God. This can mean all saints across all time, or those existent globally at a given point in time.
But let’s just think through the core word “church.” The word we use in English comes from the Old English “cyr(i)ce” which is related to the German “Kirche.” The origin of these words can be traced back to the medieval Greek “kurikon” which loosely means “The Lord’s House.” This may help us understand why buildings are often referred to as a church. Over the course of history, people would see a “kurikon” or location where Christians gather and say, “That is where the Lord’s people gather, in the Lord’s house.” Even this, however, is not the true root of the word “church.” For that, we have to go back to the original Koine Greek text in which the New Testament was written.
A cursory look for the word “church” in the ESV translation of the Bible will provide 109 results in 106 verses. The word behind that English translation of “church” is the Greek word ἐκκλησία (ek-klay-see´-ah), or as we would spell it, “ekklesia.” This is why we call the study of the church “ecclesiology.” It comes from two Greek words that mean to be “called out.” And it is used throughout the New Testament to describe any time an assembly gathers. For example, the word is used in Acts 19:32 and 39 to describe a riot that ensued when a crowd assembled in Ephesus. In Acts 23:7, “ekklesia” is used to describe the assembly and gathering of the religious leaders of the Sanhedrin. Ekklesia is used in the New Testament 117 times. 22 of those, it is used to refer to the universal church. 87 times it is used to refer to a local gathering of saints in a given locale, at a given time. The reason for this is that it can be thought of as “a gathering of the Lord’s called out ones.” It describes the community of members within the body of Christ. But as its baseline, it uses a word that has innate within it the fact that it gathers together regularly to proclaim its identity.
This idea goes even further back than the New Testament. It has within its roots the idea of God’s gathered assembly since the book of Genesis. There in the first verses of Genesis 12, God tells Abraham that his offspring will be the start of a blessing to all the nations. This has within it the promise that He wall call together the nations into relationship with Him. To do so, scripture uses imagery of the gathering together of His people. You can think of Isaiah 56:8 for example: “The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”
Throughout the Old Testament then, this idea of assembling the people of Israel together in relationship with God becomes a major theme throughout scripture. The Hebrew Scriptures speak of assembling the congregation of Israel. The first mention, for example, is in Exodus 12:6, “and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.” That word “assembly” is the Hebrew word קָהָל (kaw-hawl) or what we would spell in English as “qahal.” It means a company, assembly, congregation, or multitude. This is what is used often to describe the various “Holy Assemblies” or feasts that are to be remembered at the temple as the people of Israel gather to Jerusalem to worship God together. This word “qahal” is the background to the Greek “ekklesia” so much so that in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, called the Septuagint, the word “qahal” is rendered as “ekklesia.”
It is this Hebrew idea that fed the fledgling church as they began to have local gatherings in the first century. Small house churches met as described in Acts 2:42, and in addition, we see the church gather all its people together in a place of local assembly. This is why even the church of Jerusalem with at least 3,000 members gathered in Solomon’s portico, a large area at the temple (see Acts 5:12). This is also why you see scripture referring to the church in a given locale such as “The church of…” Ephesus, Smyrna, Thyatira, Antioch, Sardis, Pergamum, Jerusalem, Corinth, etc. It could refer to a loose identity of people who claimed to follow Christ, yes, but history serves to speak to the fact that these churches were gathering weekly to proclaim the gospel in which they believed. This is why you see it innate within verses such as 1 Corinthians 11:18 “For, in the first place, when you come together as a church…” or in the collection of the offering when gathered as a local congregation in 1 Corinthians 16:1-2: “Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.”
The word “church,” therefore, has much to it that is above and beyond a weekly gathering of its saints, but it is certainly not less than that. This is why, when the authors of the New Testament aimed to picture the church, they use the picture of an assembly worshipping God together. From Hebrews 12:23, “…and to the assembly (ekklesia) of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven…” From Revelation 7:9-10, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”” This, dear friends, is what is meant to be declared with every local gathering of believers on the Lord’s Day. By the very act of gathering together, the local church is looking forward to the day when all God’s people are gathered together before His throne in worship. It is declaring presently to the spiritual powers that Jesus reigns, victorious over the kingdom of darkness. And it heralds to the surrounding non-believing world, whether they are paying attention or not, the truth that the gospel has not only saved us as believers, but that we have been purchased into a people, an ekklesia, that even hell and death cannot overcome.
This is just the base understanding of the word “church”. In the coming posts, we will be looking at how this translates into the reverence and seriousness we should be bringing to our view of the local gathering of believers each week. We will see how it helps define our identity, how it helps provide spiritual health in accountability and hope in common unity, how it claims victory in the heavenly realm, how it proclaims the gospel to a lost and dying world. We will also look at how deeply connected the sacraments of communion and baptism are to the regular assembly of believers to which one belongs. We will look at how recent, and what I would term as errant, theological trends have removed the weight of these connections. And then possibly most importantly of all, we will try and answer the question of, “What variables do I need to consider, including risk to myself and potential risk to others, that would cause me to not attend the gathering?”
Hopefully, this first post has begun to help you see the weight with which we should view and treasure the weekly gathering of our local church. And because of this, the burden of proof lies not on the one who says that gathering is a necessary part of being a believer, but on the one who says that it is not or that this characteristic activity should be removed for a time. Even if that is communicated through a sporadic pausing of gathering. So in this time when some do not attend for varying reasons, I hope that these blogs will at least provide a tool for introspection of the motives and wisdom that lie behind one’s decision to not attend. The question each of us must ponder is this, “Are my reasons for not attending the regular gathering of my local church weighty enough that I can forsake the gathering together of the saints.” For some the answer may be yes. I think of a dear sibling saint who is going through cancer treatment right now and is in the age demographic for a high probability of fatality if exposed to COVID-19. I am pretty assured that no loving saint, and especially not our gracious Lord, would ask that precious saint to expose themself to that high level of risk. But for many others whose risk is far lower, we need to ponder the same question and be assured within our own conscience that we have made the decision with the full knowledge of the necessity of gathering as believers. I hope that these blogs will be of service to you as you ponder these things in the Spirit.