In order to understand what Jesus said and did, however, we must return these words to their context, to Second-Temple Judaism, to the life and practices of first-century Israeli Jewry. We cannot understand these words if we transplant them into Gentile soil, for they were spoken by a Jew in the land of the Jews to no one but Jews. Only when we return to this place, this people, and this time can we truly comprehend the meaning and function of the church.

Theological Analysis

The term church is both very familiar and very misunderstood, generally at the same time. What is the church, who are a part of it, when did it begin, where does it exist, how does it operate, and why does it exist? These are the questions of ecclesiology, the study of the church. Does the church make Christians or do Christians make the church the church? Is the church merely a local congregation of believers? Is it a denomination? Is it the entire Christian community? Anyone who has interacted to any degree with believers of various communions knows that the answers to these questions are many and widely divergent.

In a theological analysis, it is essential that we stress the biblicity of the church–both the term, its definition, and its function. We must turn to the Bible for our understanding of ecclesiology. In analyzing Holy Scripture, however, we must also be careful that we engage in exegesis, not eisegesis. The use of the latter has resulted in the maze of confusion on the subject that already exists, for men of good intentions have read into the texts of scriptures the meanings which their culture, politics, or other environmental conditioning dictated. We must exegete the term church by literally "drawing out" the meaning of the words and texts of Scripture.

The Church Etymologically Speaking

In Biblical language, then, the church is the assembly of those who are called out to be in covenant with God. Church is not exclusively a New Testament term, for the origin of the term is found in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament which the writers of the New Testament used. The word which the apostles chose to use as an expression of their corporate identity was the same as that which had been used by the Jewish people since the exodus. This is why Stephen calls Israel "the church in the wilderness" in Acts 7:38 and why Hebrews 2:12 quotes Psalm 22:22: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee" as "I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." This is also why Hebrews 12:23 uses "general assembly" and "church of the firstborn" as virtually synonymous.

The term church, then, might more accurately be translated congregation. Perhaps if the instructions of King James to the interpreters of the Bishops’ Bible which came to be known as the Authorized Version (King James Version) of the Scriptures had not proscribed the use of congregation in deference to the ecclesiastical term church, generations of Christians in English-speaking nations would have understood the church as the congregation of God, a perpetuation of the congregation of Israel in complete continuity. Then, we might have more readily understood Paul’s olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 to reveal Israel, into which Gentile branches were grafted to share in the spiritual root and fatness of biblical Judaism. We could also have understood the church as the continuation, not replacement, of Israel and the new covenant as a renewed covenant as Hebrews 8:10, 11 clearly reveals.

Who Are The Congregation?

The question that begs to be asked is this: who are the people who comprise the assembly of those who are called out to be in covenant with God. The answer is clear in the Old Testament: it was the entire assembly of the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob who made the exodus from Egypt and appeared before the Lord at Sinai, and it was all of their subsequent posterity. While all of Israel was denominated and arranged accordingly around the tent of meeting in the Sinai desert, they were collectively considered ‘edah, the "congregation of God." While there were various elections within Israel as Jacob noted in Genesis 49, all of Israel was the qahal, the ones called out to enter into covenant with Yahweh. All of Israel, therefore, was the church in the wilderness.

The answer is equally clear in the New Testament. Just as the Old Testament church was baptized into one body unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea (I Corinthians 10:2), so all believers have been baptized by one Spirit into one body (I Corinthians 12:13), buried with Christ in baptism (Colossians 2:12). This includes everyone who has been "called out": "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling" (Ephesians 4:4). It is a calling into covenant with God: "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead" (Romans 7:4). All believers are the children of God who have been "espoused to one husband" (II Corinthians 11:2). Though there are diversities of callings and administrations in the community of Christ, the church is one–those who have been called out from the world to come before Mount Calvary and receive the impartation of God's grace in the person of Jesus Christ and to enter into relationship with God through the new covenant. The unity of all believers in the universal church does not limit the elections of God for specific functions within the church; however, it does require that all of those elections operate in mutual respect for and submission to one another and that they maintain their ongoing interaction with one another as members of the one body of Christ.

It should be noted that the church is not merely the sum of all the local entities comprised of Christian believers. In virtually every instance of the use of the word ekklesia in the New Testament, it refers to a local body of believers. Generally this was the case with all believers in a city (Acts 5:11; 8:1; 11:22; 12:1, 5; 13:1); however, it also denotes house churches or congregations meeting in homes (Romans 16:5; Colossians 4:15). In two cases it refers to all believers in a larger geographical area (Acts 9:31; I Corinthians 16:19). In every case, however, a single group of believers is never considered as a mere part of the whole church. The fullness of the church is found in each of its localized manifestations.

"No New Thing Under The Sun"

Most Christian scholars conclude that the church began on the Day of Pentecost. And, they are right, but in the wrong century! The church did not begin on Pentecost at Mount Zion in Acts 2. It began on Pentecost at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20.

The truth is that Jesus’ "I-will-build-my-church" statement meant, "I will restore my congregation." James declared this to be Jesus’ work: "After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up" (Acts 15:16). Jesus was a restorer, not an innovator. His never intended to destroy what God had been molding among the Jewish people for centuries so that he could start something totally different and completely new. He sought only to restore the house (congregation) of David that lay in ruin.

From Temple and Synagogue

The ongoing life of the church was patterned after the synagogue. Its officers were merely an extension of the form with which the apostles had been familiar all their lives. Each congregation of the church was autonomous, like the synagogues before them. The leader of each assembly was called president (nasi), rather than pastor, until at least the middle of the second century. The government of the early church was purely egalitarian, both in the democracy of the local congregation and in the yeshiva or Beit Din of its translocal leadership (Acts 15). Monolithic organizations with hierarchial episcopacies were later accretions patterned after the governmental and military structures of the Greco-Roman world and of the nations in which Protestantism later developed

The liturgy of the earliest church paralleled the liturgy of the synagogue. Forms of prayer and praise remained consistent with the patterns of the Judaism in which Jesus and the apostles had expressed their faith. Jesus was not seeking to establish a new order; he merely brought a new covenant to God’s ancient system of praise, worship, and service–biblical Judaism.

Extended Family, Community

In reality, both synagogue and temple in the economy of Israel were patterned after Abraham and Sarah’s tent, so that even each Jewish family’s gathering for food and fellowship was thought of as in a mini-temple (mikdash me’at). The foundation of both the synagogue and the earliest church was the home, and congregations met in homes as had the synagogues of which they had been a part. Some evidence suggests that no structures were constructed solely for worship until the fourth century C.E.

An accurate depiction of the church is that of an extended family, the family of God. Community (fellowship) was foremost in the first century church and should be the guiding principle for the church today. It is in the small groups of extended family that believers receive the mutual support and reinforcement and the accountability that they need for successful Christian living.

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