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From www.citychurchfellowship.com

What do you mean my church is not a Church? We have a building and a program, we meet several times a week, we have a great pastor, we even have a sign out front that says church. How can you say we’re not a Church?

When asked, most people would describe the Church as a building with a steeple, or an organization lead by a pastor, but is this really what the Bible describes?

Have you ever checked to see?

If it is, then why are we so divided when Christ talked about a unified Church in John 17:11 and 17:23?  Some of the latest statistics are showing that there are as many as 200 different denominations in the U.S. alone and many of them refusing to even talk to each other.

If this is what the Church is, then why are we so ineffective at reaching the lost in our towns? Where is the Church spoken of in the book of Acts where whole cities were changed for God? Acts 8:4-25

These and other questions set me out on a journey to find out just what the Church is and what it really means to be a Christian in today’s generation.

The more I began to read the Word the more I began to see just how much the Christian Church of the Bible seemed to differ from what we call Church today.

One major difference was that today we see many “churches” all over any given city, yet in the early Church there was only “one Church” spoken of per city.

The Church of Ephesus Revelation 2:1

The Church of Smyrna Revelation 2:8

The Church of Pergamos Revelation 2:12

The Church of Thyatira Revelation 2:18

The Church of Sardis Revelation 3:1

The Church of Philadelphia Revelation 3:7

The Church of Laodicea  Revelation 3:14

On and on the list goes but the only time you see “Churches” spoken of is when the Bible talks about whole regions containing more than one city  for example 1 Corinthians 16:19 “…the churches of Asia salute you….”

The pattern is all over the New Testament, one city = one Church

So immediately my mind started to wonder just how we could get every Christian all over a city to meet in the same building and agree on everything?

It didn’t take me long to figure out that it just isn’t going to happen. There have already been over 200 attempts at Church reformation here in the United States alone and as many as 40,000 attempts worldwide since the day of Martin Luther. Then I recalled one definition of insanity, which is “doing the same thing over and over expecting different results”.

I then realized, that by this definition, if the Church has been seeking for unity but has been doing the same general thing to obtain it, that it must by definition be “insane”. And if I were to believe that we could fix it be getting everyone in one building then I’d have to be insane myself. So I began to search deeper in the Word for answers and found something interesting…. The Church didn’t appear to be a building or organization at all.

 I found that the Biblical word for “Church” is the greek word “ekklēsia”

ek-klay-see'-ah  which referred to a community of people rather than a building or organization.  I then found in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 that the Church is referred to as “The body of Christ” verse 27, that we each have different gifts and functions verse 28 and that we all have need of each other and should be working together verse 25.  I also found that Christ is the head of this community of Christians called “The body of Christ” Colossians 1:18. 

So my conclusion is that what we commonly call a church, by Biblical definition is not a Church at all but instead must be a ministry or a fellowship.  Don’t get me wrong,  a ministry or fellowship can be a great tool to further strengthen the body of Christ, just so long as we realize that a Church is the whole body of Christ in a town following His lead and not a ministry or fellowship lead by man.