Do we go to church or are we a community?

I was driving my son to the train back to NYC today and we became engaged in a conversation about “church”. I had recently put the finishing touches on a chapter regarding this word for my forthcoming book The Secret of God (The . It was stunning to him that I said this word is a horrible translation of the underlying Greek word (ekklaysia). Not only that, but the curious history of the English word “church” is a testimony to keeping Christians from realizing their relationship to God, Jesus and other believers.

When men began to translate the Bible into English the Greek word ekklhsia (ekklaysia) was invariably translated “congregation” (see even the Bishops Bible of 1568, the precursor of the King James Version). Yet, when James, the First, engaged scholars in England to translate the sacred texts into his (now) revered 1611 Version he forced certain rules upon the rendering body. This was after he conceded modestly to the demands of the Puritans to actually do a new translation. The Puritans, that activist group within the King’s own Anglican congregations, wanted to change church polity and purge much of the Roman Catholic trappings that remained in Anglicanism after the Reformation. James thwarted much of their upward and internal pressure by not acceding to their demands (see The Millenary Petition (1603) and the Hampton Court Conference (1604) for details on this). It is the opinion of many that the new translation was a bread crust thrown their way while the king retained the loaf of religious power.

The retention of the word “church” for ekklaysia was merely one of the many “rules of translation” that James (himself a student of theology), via his lackey Richard Bancroft, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, demanded. It helped James retain the ecclesiastic liturgy and format of an organized, top-down church government (think Roman Catholicism under another name). It made it easier to keep his thumb (more like an iron fist) on his constituency.

The better word to use in any English version is “community”. Even in our early 21^st century lives, in a Western culture, this word fits better than assembly or congregation, each of which have connotations of a group gathering at a particular place. The Greek word ekklaysia had none of that in its meaning. It is formed from two other Greek words; ek meaning “out” and kaleo meaning “to call”. They combine to mean “to call out” (in the case of a verb) and “those called out” (in the case of the noun) and therefore Christians are those called out (for a particular purpose). The secular usage of the word had been to “call out” certain Greeks in Athens to participate in political and military deliberations where issues were discussed and voted upon. The Christian community is called out for any number of purposes for the one, true God. The English translation of the word was never meant to carry structural overtones and never meant to make an institution out of what would otherwise be a bunch of people living for God.

Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews gives the only admonition to believers regarding “getting together” as a group. We don’t “go to church”; we are a community of those dedicated to the Lord Jesus and his God an ours.

^NIV Hebrews 10:25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-- and all the more as you see the Day approaching.