What is a church? How might we answer that question? Where should we start?
We could start with the word itself. In the New Testament, the word “church” is translated from the Greek word ekklēsia. An old idea which still gets passed around today is that ekklēsia means “called out ones,” given that ek means “out of” and klēsia comes from the Greek word for “called.”
This sounds nice—we’re the called-out ones!—but most of the time, this approach isn’t a great way to determine a word’s meaning. A butterfly isn’t a fly that likes butter, right? We need to look at how a word is actually used to know what it means, and by the time that the New Testament was written, the word ekklēsia did not mean “called out ones.” Instead, it had the basic meaning of “assembly,” and there are two threads that tie together to help us understand this.
OLD TESTAMENT BACKGROUND
The first thread is from the Old Testament. In the centuries before Christ’s birth, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. This Greek Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was the Bible used by many Jews in the time of Christ. Many Christians today are surprised to find out that the word ekklēsia is used, by one
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