• What is a local church?
    • The word “church.”
      • Acts 8:1-3 - Saul persecutes the church, which is composed of men and women.
      • Our English word “church” is translated from the Greek word ”ekklēsia“(1577), which appears in about 115 verses. Greek scholars describe it as follows:
        • “the ‘called-out ones’ of God” (Mounce)
        • “It was a common term for a congregation of the_ekkletoi_(n.f.), the called people, or those called out or assembled in the public affairs of a free state, the body of free citizens called together by a held (kerux[2783]) which constituted the_ekklesia_” (Zodhiates).
        • “The noun_ekklesia_occurs over one hundred times, meaning ‘church,’ with the sense of a gathered community of God’s people assembled for worship. The word has only a few exceptional ‘secular’ uses” (Renn)
        • ”a calling out,i.e. (concretely) a popular_meeting, especially a religious_congregation(Jewish_synagogue_, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both)” (Strong)
        • “properly, ‘a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place; an assembly’” (Thayer).
      • The Bible’s usage of ”ekklesia”
        • It’s important to notice how a word isusedin its Biblical context.
          • Compare “love” in II Samuel 13:1 and Matthew 22:37,39.
          • Like virtually all words,_ekklesia_has a range of meanings, so we must see how the word isusedto understand what it should call to our minds.
          • For example, compare Ephesians 4:4 and Romans 16:16 - is there on church/body or are there multiple churches?
        • Israel in wilderness. Acts 7:38: Moses “was in thecongregationin the wilderness” (KJV: ”church”).
        • Riotous mob. Acts 19:32: “some were shouting one thing and some another, for theassemblywas in confusion”; 19:41
        • Legal court. Acts 19:39: “it shall be settled in the lawfulassembly”
        • As we can see from the above, the word “ekklesia” was a neutral (non-religious) term. You have to look at the context to see what it’s talking about.
        • Universal church. Matthew 16:18: “upon this rock I will build Mychurch”
          • Saved people: Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Hebrews 12:22-24; Luke 10:22
            • The dead are in the church in the universal sense (I Thessalonians 4:16; Ephesians 3:14)
        • Local church. I Corinthians 1:2: “To the church of God which is at Corinth”