Jesus said He would build His ekklesia, and He did not mean a building. Here is what the word meant, the four pictures Paul uses for it, and how the church relates to the Kingdom that is already here.
What is the church? In the New Testament it is the ekklesia, the assembly of people Jesus has gathered to Himself. It is a people, not a building, and it is His body, His bride, His temple and His family all at once.
The church is the visible community of the Kingdom of God, which is here now. It is not the Kingdom itself, and keeping that distinction protects people from a lot of harm.
When I was a kid, church was the building with the stained glass where my family went on Sunday. We said we were going to church the same way we said we were going to the diner. It was a place, and you went there, and then you went home.
The New Testament never talks that way. Nobody in Acts goes to church. They are the church, and they meet in whatever room will hold them.
The word first shows up in Matthew 16:18, when Jesus tells Peter, I will build my church. The only other gospel use is Matthew 18:17. So what did a Greek speaker hear?
They heard a word that already had a life. In classical Athens the ekklesia was the citizen assembly. The historian Mogens Herman Hansen puts it simply: “In Athens all adult male citizens were admitted to the ecclesia, and every citizen was entitled to address the assembly and make proposals.” That is a gathering where everybody present has a voice. Keep that in mind when we get to spiritual gifts.
An assembly, a gathering of people who have been summoned together. It describes people meeting, never a structure they meet in.
Acts 19:32, 39 and 41 use the same word for the town assembly in Ephesus during the riot over Artemis. Luke had no problem calling a confused civic crowd an ekklesia.
The Greek translation of the Old Testament used it for Israel's assembly before God, as in the day of the assembly at Sinai in Deuteronomy 9:10. Stephen calls Israel in the desert the ekklesia in the wilderness in Acts 7:38.
My ekklesia. Matthew 16:18. He is gathering a people the way God gathered Israel at the mountain, and He says it belongs to Him.
A group in a house (Romans 16:5), all the believers in a city (1 Corinthians 1:2), and the whole people of God with Christ as head (Ephesians 1:22 and 23). Same word at every size.
Now a correction, and it is one that usually gets preached on our side of the argument.
Ekklesia means the called out ones, so the church is people pulled out of the world and set apart from everybody else.
It is built from parts meaning out and call, but by the first century it just meant an assembly. The weight falls on being gathered together, not on being removed from everyone else.
Believers are called by God. Romans 1:6 and 7 say it outright. But you do not get that from taking this word apart, any more than you learn what a butterfly is by studying butter. I like the point that the church is people and not property. We do not need a shaky etymology to make it. The way the word was actually used makes it for us.
Where does the book of Acts use ekklesia for something that is not the church at all?
Acts 19:32, 39 and 41. The same word Jesus used for His church names a shouting civic crowd in Ephesus, most of whom, Luke says, did not even know why they had come together. The word itself meant assembly. What made the church different was who gathered it.
Paul never hands us a one-sentence definition of the church. He gives us pictures, and each one guards against a mistake the others could leave open.
Many parts, one head, every part needed. Paul uses it to end comparison: the eye cannot tell the hand it is not needed. More on this in the body of Christ.
Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. This one is about His love and faithfulness toward us. See the bride of Christ.
You, plural, are God's temple, and His Spirit lives in you. God's dwelling moved from a building in Jerusalem to a people. See we are the temple of God.
The household of faith. Brothers and sisters, not members of an organization. Jesus said whoever does the will of God is His brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:35).
Notice that every one of these is plural. There is no such thing as a body with one part, a family of one, or a temple made of a single stone.
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
Ephesians 2:19 to 22 · NIVLook at who Paul is talking to. Ephesians 2 is about Jews and Gentiles, two groups with centuries of suspicion between them, made into one new humanity in Christ (Ephesians 2:15). That is the church at its core: people who would never have picked each other, made family by the One who picked them all. For how shocking that was, read who the Gentiles are today.
The body picture keeps us from being spectators, the bride picture keeps us loved, the temple picture keeps God's presence among people, and the family picture keeps it personal. Drop any one of them and the church starts to look like something else. If you want more, read my study on the pros and cons of church online.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Jesus did not go around Galilee preaching the church. He preached the Kingdom. The time has come, He said, the Kingdom of God has come near (Mark 1:15). He told the Pharisees it was already in their midst (Luke 17:21). Paul says God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves (Colossians 1:13). Past tense. Done. We unpack that in what the Kingdom of God is.
So how do the two relate? The strongest argument that they are the same thing goes like this: both describe God's people living under Christ's rule, Jesus mentions the keys of the Kingdom in the same breath as building His church (Matthew 16:18 and 19), and for long stretches of history Christians simply treated them as one. That is a serious argument and plenty of good people hold it.
I think it is wrong. The Kingdom is God's reign. The church is the people who have come under that reign and make it visible together. The Kingdom is the leaven working through the whole batch of dough (Matthew 13:33). It is at work in a hospital room, a courtroom and a kitchen table where no church is meeting. The church is where you can go and see it lived out in a group of actual people.
At Sound of Heaven we hold that the Kingdom of God is present, active and established now. We are not waiting for it and we are not waiting to be taken somewhere else to receive it. The covenant transition the New Testament writers expected in their own generation came to its climax when the temple fell in AD 70, and what was left standing as God's dwelling was a people, the church.
That makes the church the visible community of the Kingdom. It is not a waiting room for heaven and it is not a lifeboat. It is the place where the reign of Jesus becomes something you can see in how people forgive, share, heal, pray and tell the truth.
And it is not the Kingdom itself. When a church starts treating itself as the Kingdom, its leaders start claiming God's authority for their own decisions. The people who get hurt by that are usually the ones who asked honest questions, the ones who left, and the ones who reported something that was wrong. They were told they were leaving God when they were leaving a building. That teaching is wrong, and we say so.
The error in the other direction is just as real: the Kingdom without the church. Me and Jesus, no one else. That sounds spiritual and ends up lonely, because nobody knows you well enough to carry you when you cannot walk.
The Kingdom is bigger than the church and the church serves the Kingdom. A church that remembers that stays humble. A believer who remembers it stays connected.
Remember the Athenian assembly, where every citizen had a voice. Paul describes a Christian gathering in similar terms: when you come together, each of you has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation (1 Corinthians 14:26). To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7). All of those gifts are active today. Healing, prophecy, tongues and miracles are real, and they are given to build people up, not to put on a show. Our overview of spiritual gifts walks through them.
“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:11 to 13 · NIVThese five are gifts Christ gives to the body, and their job is to equip everybody else. They are functions, not titles and not rungs on a ladder.
Pioneering and building. Starting new works, laying foundations, sending people out. It is not a rank that makes someone untouchable.
Hearing what God is saying and calling the church back to the heart of Jesus. Always tested, always for strengthening, encouraging and comfort (1 Corinthians 14:3).
Carrying the good news to people who have not heard it in a way they can hear, and teaching the rest of us to do the same.
Shepherding. Noticing who is missing, sitting with the grieving, protecting the vulnerable, and knowing people by name.
Explaining Scripture clearly enough that people can read it for themselves and stand on their own feet.
The measure of healthy fivefold ministry is not how impressive the leaders look. It is how many ordinary people are doing the work of ministry. We go further in the five-fold ministry, and if you are wondering what churches mean when they call themselves apostolic, that has its own page: what an apostolic church is.
The earliest church had no buildings of its own. It had homes, a few public spaces and a lot of shared meals.
The Spirit comes on believers who are together in one place, and the first sermon ends with thousands baptized. The story is told in the day of Pentecost, and what baptism means is in what is baptism.
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread and to prayer. They met in the temple courts and ate together in homes. The meal at the center became what we call the Lord's Supper.
Paul greets the church that meets at Priscilla and Aquila's house (Romans 16:5) and writes to the church of God in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:2). Small rooms, one people.
Jerusalem's temple is destroyed within the generation Jesus warned about. The old covenant order ends, and God's dwelling is where Paul said it already was: in His people.
Notice what the list in Acts 2 does not include: a stage, a production, or a crowd watching a few people do everything. Good music and good facilities are fine. People devoted to Jesus and to each other are what make a church.
That is also why the denomination on the sign is not the main question. We explain why we are not affiliated with one in what non-denominational means. Online services are a gift, but the New Testament picture is people who can see each other and notice when someone is missing. Hebrews 10:25 tells believers not to give up meeting together, and we look at that question honestly in what the Bible says about going to church.
Some of you are reading this with your guard up, and I understand why. Maybe a leader controlled you, shamed you, or protected someone who harmed you. Maybe you asked a question and were treated like a problem. That was real, it was wrong, and it was not what the church is meant to be.
You do not have to rush back into a room full of people. Start with one or two believers you trust. Take your time. If you want someone to pray with you, send us a prayer request and a real person will read it. And when you are ready to try a gathering again, you can plan a visit and come as quietly as you like. Nobody will put you on the spot.
An assembly is only as meaningful as the one who calls it. Athens gathered its citizens. Ephesus gathered a riot. Jesus gathers a people and says they are His.
He is the head of the body, the church (Colossians 1:18). He is the cornerstone the whole building rests on. He loved the church and gave Himself for her. And He promised that where two or three gather in His name, He is there with them (Matthew 18:20). The church is not something we build for Jesus. It is something He builds out of us, and our place in it is a gift, not a reward for being impressive.
So the question is not really which building you go to. It is who you belong to, and who belongs to you. If you have been a spectator, find a place to serve. If you have been hurt, find a few safe people. If you have been doing it alone, stop. You were never meant to.
For related reading, see what we believe at Sound of Heaven, the New Jerusalem, evangelism in the church and the full list of articles and Bible studies.
The church is the ekklesia Jesus gathers, a people and never a building, pictured as His body, bride, temple and family, made of people who would never have chosen each other, equipped so that everyone serves, and standing as the visible community of a Kingdom that is already here.
Tell us where you are, whether you are new to faith, coming back after a hard season, or just curious, and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and reach out.
In the New Testament the church is the ekklesia, the assembly of people Jesus gathers to Himself. It is never a building. Paul describes it with four pictures at once: the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the temple where God lives by His Spirit, and the household or family of God. It shows up as a group meeting in a home, as all the believers in a city, and as the whole people of God everywhere. In every case the word points to people gathered around Jesus.
Not the way it is usually preached. The word is built from parts meaning out and call, but by the first century it simply meant an assembly. Athens used it for the citizen assembly, Luke uses it for the town meeting in Ephesus in Acts 19, and the Greek Old Testament uses it for Israel gathered before God. The emphasis is on being gathered together. Believers are called by God, and Scripture says so plainly, but that point does not come from the etymology of this word.
No, and the difference matters. The Kingdom of God is God's reign through Jesus, and it is present and established now. The church is the community of people who have come under that reign and make it visible together. The Kingdom is bigger than the church and works in places where no church is meeting. When a church treats itself as the Kingdom, leaders start claiming God's authority for their own decisions, and the people who question them get treated as if they had questioned God.
You are saved by trusting Jesus, not by attendance. But the New Testament never pictures a follower of Jesus who belongs to no one. Every image for the church is plural: a body with many parts, a family, a building made of living stones. Hebrews tells believers not to give up meeting together because they need each other's encouragement. If church has hurt you, take your time and start small. What you are looking for is people who know you well enough to carry you, and that rarely happens alone.
There is no difference in who they are. Body of Christ is one of the main pictures Paul uses for the church, the people Jesus gathers. The word church names the assembly, and the body picture explains how it works: many members with different gifts, one head who is Christ, and every part needed by the others. Paul uses it to stop comparison and competition. The hand cannot tell the foot it is not needed, and no one gets to sit on the sidelines as a spectator.