The Church is a Building
In secular Greek, at the time of the New Testament, the word ekklessia meant an assembly or a gathering. In the New Testament it is used a jargon word that for those who are gathered by God as His people. See, in particular, Acts 2:47, 5:11. 7:38, 8:1, and 9:31. We often translate ekklesia into English as “church, but in English the word “church” is more than just people.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary gives as the first use “a building used for public Christian worship.” The 2nd and 3rd meanings are for “a particular Christian organization with its own distinctive doctrines” and “institutionalized religion as a political or social force.” This makes sense etymologically for the word “church” does not come into English from ekklessia, but from the Greek word kuriakon which means the Lord’s house. In any case, the word “Church” often means the building where Christians gather.
When people say things like “the Church is not a building” they are typically promoting a view of the Church more closely allied to the New Testament use of the word ekklesia. And perhaps we would have been better served if we had ever translated ekklessia as Church, but a substitute like “congregation” doesn’t always work. There are times that context demands we translate ekklesia as something akin to “the whole people of God” or “all believers” such as Matthew 16:18: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18, NKJV) In fact, it turns out that the word “church” actually works perfectly well for both an individual congregation of believers and the larger reality of the whole people of God.
I suspect this why it also came to mean the building. I think that was originally a good move. The blending of God’s gathering us together as a people to speak to us, to hear our prayers, and feed us while we praised Him with the space used for this peculiar and essential purpose was actually helpful and appropriate. Our current confusions do not derive from mistakenly referring to a building as “church” instead of the people but the sorts of buildings we use the word for. It is oft cited and only anecdotal, but I will do so again: we used to build churches for worship. We then added halls for wedding showers and pot-lucks and the like over the years as congregations grew. Now we tend to build “multi-purpose gymnasiums” that are awkwardly used for worship once a week and we hardly build churches at all. We have changed the purpose of our buildings from glorifying God and making a confession about His grandeur and grace to glorifying entertainment and comfort.
Buildings can be more than merely practical. They can be a confession of the faith that testifies in a neighborhood or city to God’s enduring presence and promises. They can be distinct from other buildings and provide a place of beauty and rest in a chaotic and overly pragmatic world. They can be received from our ancestors with gratitude. We benefit from their sacrifices. They can also be passed on to our progeny with hope.
It seems to me, especially in the midst of our current difficulty in gathering due to government restrictions and various fears, that we need buildings as “church” more than ever. It is not as central as the risen Body and Blood of Jesus or His Word, but we need a physical space in this world and not just an image on the screen to be gathered in our bodies with one another. If the best we can do is a barn, sobeit. Let’s clean the barn thoroughly and do our best to orient and decorate it appropriately. If it can at all be avoided, let’s not feed pigs in there or store grain or put up a basketball hoop. Let it a house of prayer and a testament to the faith of the Church and the promises of our God. Let’s honor and revere the space where Christ invades this mortal plane with His mortal Body made immortal. Let us stand in awe and joy with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven and know that however humble our space may be it is most certainly holy if Christ abides there. In any and all cases, let’s not denigrate the physical world or the things that assist piety and faith but rejoice in them and receive them as gifts.
Pictured: St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ft. Wayne, Indiana