So why do you suppose God set things up that way? You know, why set up his Kingdom in congregations that love each other in that way? Why not just be Christians individually and serve as the Spirit leads? Why congregations?
It’s an important question for a couple of reasons. First, many people are choosing to follow Jesus with no congregational ties. But, second, the fact that God wants us to be part of congregations tells us something about his purposes in establishing the Kingdom. For some reason, the use of local congregations fulfills God’s goals in bringing the Kingdom.
I mean, if being part of a local congregation is central to God’s purposes, that fact alone gives one more reason that faith in Jesus is essential.
Let’s start with “church.” The Greek is ekklēsia, which, by the way, does not mean “called out.”
You’re kidding! That’s what I’ve always been told.
We sometimes confuse the root of a word with its meaning. But etymology — the tracing of word origins — only offers a clue to the word’s meaning.
In New Testament studies, it’s almost always true that the writers use a Greek word in its Old Testament sense, if the word has an established Old Testament usage.
The same sort of thing is true of English. If I speak of the “prodigal son,” you’ll find the meaning in the King James Bible, not the dictionary and certainly not by looking up the origins of “prodigal” in an English resource.
In the Old Testament, ekklēsia is found several times in Deuteronomy —
(Deu 4:10 LXE) even the things that happened in the day in which ye stood before the Lord our God in Choreb in the day of the assembly; for the Lord said to me, Gather the people to me, and let them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days which they live upon the earth, and they shall teach their sons.
(Deu 9:10 LXE) And the Lord gave me the two tables of stone written with the finger of God, and on them there had been written all the words which the Lord spoke to you in the mountain in the day of the assembly.
(Deu 18:16 LXE) according to all things which thou didst desire of the Lord thy God in Choreb in the day of the assembly, saying, We will not again hear the voice of the Lord thy God, and we will not any more see this great fire, and so we shall not die.
(Deu 23:1 LXE) He that is fractured or mutilated in his private parts shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord.
(Deu 23:2 ESV) “No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD.
(Deu 23:3 ESV) “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever,”
(Deu 23:7-8 LXE) 7 Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, because he is thy brother; thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land. 8 If sons be born to them, in the third generation they shall enter into the assembly of the Lord.
(Deu 31:30 LXE) And Moses spoke all the words of this song even to the end, in the ears of the whole assembly.
(“LXE” refers to Brenton’s English translation of the Septuagint.)
The “assembly” or ekklēsia was not just any gathering. These are references to times during the Exodus that God called the people together to hear his word and to make covenant.
For example, Deu 4:10 refers back to —
(Exo 20:1-20 ESV) And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”
Therefore, the church is most truly the church when it is gathered together to hear the word of God and commit to it. We gather as though at the foot of Mt. Sinai, prepared to hear the very words of God announced from the heavens. And we do this in community.
Deu 31:30 concludes a chapter that includes —
(Deu 31:12-13 ESV) 12 “Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, 13 and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”
There were to be periodic assemblies so that the Law could be read to the people.
Modern ears are offended that some were to be excluded from the assembly, but implicit in the penalty of exclusion is the fact that the assembly was to be a privilege and blessing. The Israelites were to adore their God and feel blessed to participate in the assemblies where the Law was read. To be excluded was a great disappointment and embarrassment.
Therefore, when the New Testament writers chose to refer to the church as the ekklēsia, they used a word with a history — a word that referred to the entire nation of Israel, gathered to hear God’s word and enter into covenant with him.
But the writers also refer to individual congregations as an ekklēsia, surely meaning that each congregation is supposed to be Israel in this city, gathered to hear the word of God and renew their vows.
This gives much greater depth to such passages as —
(1Ti 4:13 ESV) 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
Moreover, ekklēsia carries the import of a community that one craves to be a part of and would desperately not want to be excluded from. Exclusion from the ekklēsia is a sign of God’s displeasure. It should be an unbearable stigma. (Hence, 1 Cor 5.)
And yet many converts to Jesus refuse to participate in the ekklēsia of God, preferring to travel in the desert alone, apart from God’s special presence that resides in the midst of the camp, apart from the love, support, and encouragement of fellow travelers, and apart from the declaration of the word of God to the assembly.
Perhaps our sermons don’t measure up to the best books in the bookstores and the best materials on the Internet. But a sermon spoken by a leader of the church, from his heart, speaking not of God’s word in the abstract but about this church and its special vision and specific needs and mission cannot be replaced by even the best teaching of strangers. Strangers cannot build community.
After all, the words of the covenant at Mt. Sinai were,
(Exo 24:3b ESV) And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.”
Covenant with God is not made individually. It’s not “I will do” but “we will do.” And this is no coincidence. Many of God’s commands were given to Israel as a nation. They were commands that could only be performed together. For example,
(Exo 23:23-24 ESV) 23 “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, 24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.”
Thus, begins God charges to the Israelites to follow his angel — apparent in a column of smoke and fire — to the Promised Land and then to conquer the land with the help of God himself.
The Israelites were given a mission, and it was a mission that could only be accomplished together. No one Israelite could overthrow the pagan nations and possess the land by himself! No one Israelite could travel the desert without water and manna from the hand of God. No one Israelite could even find the Promised Land without following God’s guiding light.
These blessings that God gave he gave to the community in a way that could only be honored in community.
Faith, you see, can only be lived in the community of faith, because faithfulness is too big to live alone. Our mission is bigger than any one of us.
Perhaps, if the “church” had the power and not just the words, more people would come… As it is now, there are many words and very little power..
Deu 31:12-13 ESV) 12 “Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, 13 and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”
If we use this for justification for assembling , why do we do this every seven days instead of years, and why do we not read the total book of laws to those assembled.
Why because we are under a “New Covenant” .
Laymond,
What exactly is your point? Maybe I’m dense, but I frankly do not understand what you are trying to say.
Jerry, my point is that Deu. 31,12-13 is not a good reason for church assembly today.
Hbr 8:13 In that he saith, A new [covenant], he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old [is] ready to vanish away.
Hbr 8:7 For if that first [covenant] had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.
I am of the opinion that Jesus/The Son of God, did away with special places of worship, in the following conversation. Tell me where I misunderstand what Jesus said.
Jhn 4:20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Jhn 4:21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
Jhn 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
Jhn 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
Jhn 4:24 God [is] a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship [him] in spirit and in truth.
I agree with Price. I know (and am know by) my co-workers better than those I attend church with. The social needs I have that should be met by fellow Christians are better met by those I work with or my neighbors. I feel like I am doing more ministry in their company than with Christians (maybe that’s not a bad thing). It is something I just realized. Years of poor sheparding and legalistic arguments are starting to show its fruit. It seems that the American church is just there to punch their time card. I can only imagine the frustration that many paid ministers much have. I wish the church was more of what I read in the Bible….focused, committed, communal, etc. Not only is this missing in many places, but the opportunity for these things to take place are missing. That’s more of what I am getting at. How does this get fixed? Or have there been more than enough opportuntities and this is just the way things are? Sometimes I wish we had a great persecution to draw us closer together, like in the New Testament.
Jay, you appear to conflate congregational membership with real relationship with other believers. Where those two flow together, that’s great. But it’s a presumption with far too many exceptions to be taken as “normative”. The very reason that many of us find our fellowship across congregational lines is that the nature of modern congregational membership is more proprietary than relational. We don’t mind being used, but we resent being owned.
What do I mean by proprietary? Simply that to be a member of First Street Church means I owe them my exclusive Sunday morning attendance and first claim on my charity. (Sometimes, they make you sign papers to that effect…) Now, I can be a member of First Church AND the Gideons AND Campus Crusade AND The Navigators… but I can’t be a full-on member of First Street Church AND Second Street Church. If one thinks this is not true, just try telling one of the elders that you like being a member of First Street Church, but you like the worship at Second Street Church, so you will be over there every Sunday. Oh, and tell him you give your tithe to a local mission to help them feed the poor, but you’ll gladly participate in other activities at First Street Church, and give them occasional offerings for good works, and try to be a blessing to the other people in the congregation. Let me know what he says about your “membership”.
No, the member is seen as a support for the institution, rather than the other way ’round. I have spent many an evening in small groups, getting teaching and encouragement which allowed us to slog through the requisite church activities of our congregation. I would say that most (not all) congregational membership is better than being alone, but interpersonal relationship with other believers is better than membership in most congregations.
It is inarguable that believers are intended to live as a community. The scriptures make this abundantly clear. But to take the term “community” and merely substitute “a local congregation” is flawed reasoning. Regularly-scheduled short-term co-location of acquaintances is NOT the same thing as living as the body of Christ.
Charles,
You are looking at the ekklesia as it is; Jay is looking at it as it is meant to be. Yet, when ekklesia is reduced to assembly, which it is in most congregations today, it bears little resemblance to the servant-body of Jesus. That is, if our only relationship is in the assembly, and if there is little to no “service” going on there, then where do we serve as the hands and feet of Christ – except as individuals? I know many church members who serve in their communities – but individually, not collectively. The communal fellowship just is not present in their congregational experience. If I understand what Jay is saying, he is looking at the ideal, which exists at least in part among some congregations. In fact, the one time I visited Jay’s congregation I was impressed by the fellowship and the service to others that I saw in that congregation as a whole.
When I read this post, I was reminded of Jesus’ statement, “You are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” The you here is plural – and it is a city of lights that cannot be hidden. An individual candle can be hidden under a bushel. It is in community that the saints shine as lights in the world. But, as you pointed out, this just is not happening in many places today.
Laymond,
Jay’s article describes the OT background of the word ekklesia as it appears in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. He is not using Deuteronomy 31 as “authority” for Christians to assemble. Rather, he uses it to describe what ekklesia meant to Paul and other Jews.
The attention to reading the revealed Words of God that is in Deuteronomy 31:12f also is in 1 Timothy 4:13 as well: “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.
In many churches, rarely is much time at all given to the public reading of the Scripture – and in those who do have a pro forma reading of Scripture, it is done so poorly that scarcely anyone gets anything out of it except the fact that we read the Scripture. (Even many “sermons” have little to no Scripture expounded in them!) The “sermon” often becomes an essay written by the preacher, which may or may not have a solid basis in Scripture. They do, however, have the obligatory “three points and a poem.”
If we were serious about reading the Scriptures, as Paul exhorted Timothy to be, people would know the Book far better than most churches do. That, I believe, is what Jay was encouraging by his reference to Deuteronomy.
Jerry, if Jay had explained what he said, the way you explained what he said, there would have been no questions about what he said, 🙂
Jerry, I can see Jay’s view as an ideal, and can accept it as such. The rub comes when we present one in lieu of the other, or as a temporary substitute. “I know you need a airplane, but until we get one, take this wheelbarrow and we’ll call it an airplane.” The most airplane-like wheelbarrow then becomes our model.
I am a believer in the necessity of community, in fact so much so that I have an issue with the congregational model of breaking the community of believers into isolated self-sufficient discrete chunks. As to Jay’s patternistic assertion about covenant congregations, I think attributing this to God’s will goes a bit far. I do not find in the early church any mention of a new crop of Messianic synagogues. I do find households of believers and I find interconnection of the members of those households via religious tradition (going to the temple) and apostolic relationship (Paul says the churches of Christ told him to tell the Romans “Hello!”). On a larger scale, I find functional coalescence and recognition of leaders as needed (feeding the widows, receiving the Gentiles, dealing with Antioch). Any similarity between these expressions of Body life and our modern congregationalism is anecdotal and fragmented and finds more exceptions than not.
Not all of our modern denominationalism is rooted in pride and division. Some is rooted in distinct godly visions which solidified into organizations which were something less. But rather than bat generalities about, I would ask that we look at our individual congregations and ask ourselves, “Why does this particular congregation exist?” Not what does it do, but how did it come to be?
First of all, only a few existing congregations in my city can claim to have been planted because there was little or no existing organized Christian community. Back during the westward expansion, perhaps, one could argue, “When my great-grandfather got here, there was only one church in the area, and it would not accept him as a believer. So, he started THIS one.” I will recognize that Great-Grandpa had the separation forced upon him, and understand the necessity of his actions.
But what about YOUR congregation? Was it rooted in doctrinal division, on personal preference, on a desire to have a group which operates as one self-cadre of believers saw fit? Was it formed from a divorce from other believers, or an opportunity for a preacher to scratch-start a religion business which would provide for his family? Or was it needed to introduce Jesus into an area where there were few Christians and even fewer Christian congregations? I have heard the “travel” reason offered many times– we needed a congregation in our own neighborhood– but that one usually ignores that other groups of believers were already in the neighborhood, just not of our own brand.
It is not reasonable to expect any congregation to grow into something which it never was. One may improve the fruit of a blackberry bush, but one may not pick roses from it. Now, that does not mean an established group cannot leave its entire historic basis and begin wholly anew, rather like gutting an old building and building a whole new interior from scratch. It is possible, I suppose, and I respect people who have the intestinal fortitude to attempt it. But it’s as rare as a speedy snail, and that’s not where the smart money bets.
When your roots are not community, but exclusion, it’s not reasonable to expect people (inside or outside) to see you as “community”. When your roots are division, inclusivity is not in your congregational DNA. When your congregation was created so that a small group could have a congregation that did things “right” — as opposed to what those guys in our old congregation did– oligarchy is part of your genetic code. It’s not as easy as adding a “seeker service” or starting an “old clothes for the poor” room.
If you need to fly, you can take some of the metal from a tractor trailer and use it in the manufacture of an airplane. But that process begins with admitting that the truck itself will never fly. That’s hard for any of us.
I would agree that visiting a congregation on Sunday can give us a feel for the overall ambience of the group gatherings, how much people enjoy being there, and may reflect well or badly on the general demeanor of the members and the leaders. I am not so sure it tells us all that much about the community of the believers. At a football game, it is clear that we are all glad to be there. We grin like fools when our team hits the field, we cheer together, we happily high-five strangers in the next row, we wear the same color clothing, we are very much “in one accord”. This does not suggest that we have significant community outside the ball game. Now, it might be that walking around during the pre-game tailgaiting would give me better insight into whether this is only a “congregation”, or whether it is really a community. I wonder what the congregational analog would be to a tailgate party?
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