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 What is Church?
by Eric Schlange, 4/1/04
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When Edge Community first began, I recall meeting a woman while looking into renting the school gym on Sundays. She asked me what we were renting it for, and I said we had started a church and wanted to meet there. She proceeded to ask me a profound question. In a completely honest tone, she turned and asked, “What do you mean, church?”
I was taken aback! What do you mean, what do I mean? Don’t you know what church is? I stumbled a little bit over my explanation, because I hadn’t really thought it through. What is church? What were we doing, exactly, that made us a church? Or maybe we weren’t a church at all? Following that encounter, I spent a lot of time pondering the woman’s question. Just what is church? I asked different people what they thought, and got conflicting answers. I began to realize that sometimes even Christians don’t know what church is! The problem is that we’ve given the word multiple meanings (one of the joys of our sloppy English language). In America, “church” has come to mean:
- a weekly gathering of believers: “Hey, I missed you at church last week!”
- a physical building or location: “We need a bigger parking lot at the church.”
- an unspecific religious activity: “What we really want to do is reach the unchurched.”
- a local, incorporated group of believers: “The church just elected a new elder board.”
- all believers in a locality: “The church of Jerusalem.”
- a global group of believers: “All believers are part of the Church.”
Since Edge began, we’ve had to “deconstruct” many of the false foundations and pointless traditions that were second nature to us who had been saved for many years. In doing so, we learned time and time again that the best way to see into God’s heart is to read his words. The Bible does a great job of explaining what the church is, as defined by the creator of the church himself.
In God’s word we see that “church” can be defined only two different ways. The first refers to the global community of believers—best understood if we use the word “Church” (note the uppercase “C”). Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her and the Church is pictured as the bride of Christ (Ephesians 2:22-33). It is apparent that anyone who has placed their trust in Jesus Christ has become a member of the global Church.
The Bible’s use of “church” can also refer to a local group of believers, such as the church of Ephesus or the church of Jerusalem. Almost all of Paul’s letters were written to specific churches, and are thus named for that church (e.g., Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians). It is interesting to note that Jesus’ apostles set up churches by locality (city or area) and not denomination.
So what can we learn from the Bible’s uses of “church?” For me, the most important thing to remember is that the church is a people, not a place or an activity. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in trying to buy a building or organize grand events—both of which are nice, yet unessential parts of being a church. We all need to keep a tenacious focus on the people around us who need God. Like Howard Dean said: it’s the people, stupid!
Secondly, looking at the Bible’s idea of the local church reinforces the understanding that today’s local church scene is not as God desires it to be. When Christians meet separately without working with other local believers (or even working against them!) God is not glorified. At Edge we want to see local church communities united on many different levels so God can use us all to do his work together here in Lake County.
Lastly, we always need to remember that we are part of something much bigger. The global Church has hundreds of millions of members, and we need to be supporting each other as a global community.
May God continue to bless us with a fuller understanding of what “church” is, and what that means for our lives today!
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