Tradition Three: The Church is a Building

Which of the above buildings looks most like a church? The most elaborate ones? The plain and simple ones?

The word "church" brings to mind up a variety of images. Is the church a building where religious events take place? Is the church a social club in which Christians choose to hold membership, formal or informal? Is it a magnificent architecturally designed building with statues, stained glass windows and highly prized paintings? Or is it modest little chapel in a country setting?

None of these popular uses of the term "church" come even close to the New Testament meaning of the word church. The word translated "church" in the English Bible is ekklesia. This word is the Greek words kaleo (to call), with the prefix ek (out). Thus, the word means "the called out ones."

However, the English word "church" does not come from ekklesia but from the word kuriakon, which means "dedicated to the Lord." This word was commonly used to refer to a holy place or temple. By the time of Jerome's translation of the New Testament from Greek to Latin in around AD 382 and 420, it was customary to use a derivative of kuriakon to translate ekklesia. Therefore, the word church is a poor translation of the word ekklesia since it implies a sacred building, or temple. A more accurate translation would be "assembly" because the term ekklesia was used to refer to a called out people.

Strangely enough, in today's environment, many use expressions like "I'm going to church tonight", "Come to our church", or "Our church is located at 123 State Avenue". If a person from a New Testament setting, such as the book of Acts, were to listen to our "church talk", he would be quite confused. As stated, the expression "church" in those days meant a called out body of people, but today we use it to describe a building or group of people who regularly meet in a building. Instead of being called out, we use this word to describe a building in which people are compelled to come in!

Let us be clear. We are not necessarily opposed to meeting in a modest building, either rented or owned. However, we are strongly opposed to spending excessive resources on a brick and mortar building instead of on real needs of people. We have known of places where 70% or more of their entire yearly budget was spent on material (temporal) things, rather than spiritual things! The New Testament church, that is those holy persons who were called out of a life of sin, out of the world and out of formal religion, never owned a single building, yet they "turned the world upside down" and preached the gospel "to every creature".

The Bible teaches that born-again people are the church (1 Cor. 3:l6; Eph. 2:21-22; 1 Pet. 2:5). Just think of all the needs that could be met if we used God's resources to reach out to the lost, the hungry, the thirsty and poor, as Jesus commanded (read Matthew 25).

Is there not a real lesson here for us today?

The next time you see a building called a church, no matter how big or small, just remember, that "church" will someday instantly melt with fervent heat at Jesus' second coming. We will all give an account, not only for every idle word we speak, but for every dollar we misspend. We can hardly imagine God giving us a big pat on the back and saying "Thank you for that wonderful church building you dedicated to me and for spending so much of your time, money and effort on maintaining that building I just melted with fervent heat!

May God set the church on fire today, and by that we don't mean a building.