Ask the average person today what they think of when they hear the word "church," and you're guaranteed to get a wide range of answers. What in the world is this word? What is its meaning? What isn't its meaning?

First, let's trace a little history. Church is a word related to Christianity, at least in the English language. It almost universally has a religious connotation, and is not used for non-religious applications. For example, you wouldn't refer to the crowd at a basketball game as a church. They're just a group of people--the crowd, the audience. But put that same group of people inside a large building with stained-glass windows and pews, and people would call it church.

Our English word church is linguistically derived from a Medieval Greek word meaning "the Lord's." However, when we see it in the Bible, what we are seeing is the translation into the English language of the Koine Greek word ekklesia. Koine Greek is the type of Greek language that the New Testament was written in, in the first century A.D., and passed out of use around the ninth century A.D.

Interestingly, in the Greek language the word ekklesia does not necessarily carry the religious connotation of its English counterpart, church. In fact, the inherent and basic meaning of ekklesia is simply, "a called out group (of people)." For examples of non-religious use in the New Testament, we can reference Acts 19:32, 39, 41. Here ekklesia represents a tumultuous gathering of citizens (v. 32, 41) as well as a political body (v. 39) in the city of Ephesus, and in both cases is commonly translated "assembly."

It is also very relevent to note what the church is not:

1. It is not a building, cathedral, or chapel. No physical edifice is the church. They are just brick, mortar, boards, and cement. Interestingly, Scripture does liken the church to a building, but a spiritual one and not a physical one. The people are symbolically the spiritual house of God. The church is the people, not the place where they gather.
2. As commonly as we refer to attending a worship service as "going to church," this is also not the church. We may go to gather with the church, yes. But the church is the people, not the worship service they participate in.

The word does not occur in the Old Testament, of course, because the Old Testament was written almost entirely in the Hebrew language. In the New Testament, its first mention is during Jesus' life and ministry on earth, when Peter confesses Him as the Christ. Jesus responds by mentioning His plan to establish His church,

"I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it." (Matthew 16:18)

Here the church was mentioned in a future tense. By the first part of the book of Acts, we find that the church had been established and was in existence. Starting from the Day of Pentecost shortly after Christ's resurrection, the church was a living, growing group of people. By the fifth chapter of Acts, this body of believers was being referred to as the ekklesia:

"And great fear came over the whole church..."

From the above references, we can summarize several basic points:

• God calls through the gospel, the message of Jesus Christ.
• When someone hears or reads the gospel being preached, he or she is being called.
• Those who believe and obey are the "called out." They are the church.

This demonstrates the meaning of the word ekklesia - it is simply a group of people who have come out of one "realm" and into another. This is in holding with the wording of the apostle Paul in Colossians 1:13-14,

"For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

So to wind this down to one simple statement, the church is the saved. Nobody who is not saved is in the church, and nobody who is saved is not in the church. They are one and the same thing - to be saved is to be in the church.

To understand this, some of us may need to scrap our traditional preconceived ideas of "church membership." Is the church sort of like a "club" that you join by signing up? Do you maybe have to go through some initiation process? In a sense, yes, and we'll get to that in a minute. But the ironic truth is that there is nothing you can do to add yourself to the church, to make yourself a part of it. Instead, starting from the day the first sermon was preached,

"...the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved." (Acts 2:47)

"Their number" simply refers to the number of saved people. The King James Version even simply says, "the Lord added to the church..." So who makes you part of the church? That is God's work. Apart from God's grace and choice to add obedient believers to His church, there would be no church at all. What we simply need to know is, what are God's criteria? We just saw it straightforwardly enough in the above scripture: He was adding to the church those people who were being saved. The very moment they were saved (see v. 41) they were added by God to the church. So the criterion is that you be saved.

Thus, as mentioned before, in a very limited sense, the church is something you join, just not by your own doing or merit. You do what God told you to do, and He promises that He will add you to the church. Not because you earned it, or qualified. But because you have submitted to Him and allowed Him to change you and to add you to His church.

Indeed, praise be to God that today the church exists in the vast majority of nations currently on the earth, all around the globe. Men and women of all skin colors have obeyed the gospel, the very gospel which is being preached and taught daily in countless languages and dialects!

It is in this universal sense that every believer who is saved is added to the "one body" of Ephesians 4:4. As it is written,

"For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)

When speaking in this universal sense, it is important to understand the "church of Christ" not as a name but as a relationship, a designation of ownership and allegiance. It is the church that belongs to Christ.

The Local Sense

Along with the universal sense, the other sense in which the church is mentioned in the New Testament is the local sense. This geographical sense simply refers to individual congregations of the universal church, in various local vicinities. As it is neither practical nor possible for the entire, universal church to assemble together at any given time (until heaven!), Christians around the world gather together with other Christians in their locale, in the area where they live. It is convenient to refer to these as "congregations." It is here that brethren who live near each other share daily and weekly fellowship, worship together, and learn together (among other things).

We can see many examples of these local churches in various cities in the book of Acts and the New Testament letters:

• "the church that was at Antioch" (Acts 13:1)
• the church in Ephesus (Acts 20:17)
• "the church of God which is at Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2)
• "the church that is in [Aquila and Prisca's] house" (1 Corinthians 16:19)
• "the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 1:1)

In mentioning these separate "churches," Paul was not speaking of multiple universal churches, but of the numerous local "churches" (congregations of the one universal church) in each city, when he said, "All the churches of Christ greet you." (Romans 16:16)

The Regional Sense

While the universal and local senses are by far more relevent and common, there is also the regional sense. This is where areas or larger geographical regions are mentioned in which multiple local churches exist. For example,

• "the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria" (Acts 9:31)
• "the churches of Asia" (1 Corinthians 16:19)
• "the churches of Galatia" (Gal. 1:2)
• "the churches of Judea which were in Christ" (Gal. 1:22)