Defining Church
Or maybe I should call it deconstructing church. I have been meaning to start this post for awhile, but was really hoping to have more time to be more thorough. I determined today that I would send it out as a brief discussion starter and rather let you all determine where it should go instead. So my question is this: What is church? Sounds simple enough to answer, but I find, often enough, that the word's meaning can change within a simple sentence or phrase. Not a problem, really. I have no problem with words meaning whatever the culture is accustomed to using it to mean. But when you have one word that means multiple things to a given culture, it is often easy to misunderstand one another when speaking/writing about such things. Not only that, but we have the issue that we are people being shaped by a story that happens to use that same word. When we use the word do we mean by it what the authors of the story meant by it? I don't think it is 'bad' or 'wrong' to use the word differently . . . I don't think that is what being biblical is really all about. But I do think it can become confusing and that issues become misunderstood when meanings are swapped. Take the following examples:
I go to church on Sundays.
The letter to the church in Rome . . .
You're one of those church-people.
The church met to discuss our options.
The church issued an encyclical.
These are the events happening at the church this weekend . . .
Church was really good today.
Sally is un-churched.
Are you a member of that church?
The church is seated w/ the Christ in the heavenlies.
She works for the church.
So, faced with this array of options of meanings for church (and I just gave examples of different usages w/o really talking about meaning), what is one supposed to conclude is the meaning behind a statement like 'X is the direction the church is going'?
Ultimately, I would expect, wherever the discussion takes us, eventually to answer the question: so what does this mean for the people who participate in this post? What does this mean for those who meet at the Boehmers' house on Tuesday nights? Does clarifying the issue change anything?
I go to church on Sundays.
The letter to the church in Rome . . .
You're one of those church-people.
The church met to discuss our options.
The church issued an encyclical.
These are the events happening at the church this weekend . . .
Church was really good today.
Sally is un-churched.
Are you a member of that church?
The church is seated w/ the Christ in the heavenlies.
She works for the church.
So, faced with this array of options of meanings for church (and I just gave examples of different usages w/o really talking about meaning), what is one supposed to conclude is the meaning behind a statement like 'X is the direction the church is going'?
Ultimately, I would expect, wherever the discussion takes us, eventually to answer the question: so what does this mean for the people who participate in this post? What does this mean for those who meet at the Boehmers' house on Tuesday nights? Does clarifying the issue change anything?
posted by Unknown at
2:32 PM
2 Comments:
I am also perfectly okay with using words according to the meanings culture gives them. In fact, if I wasn't okay with that, then I would not "be okay" with language at all. I am a good little English major, and was paying enough attention in 376--The Politics of Persuasion--to retain the lecture on the nature of language as a "living entity"--i.e. a forever recursive shifting of social norms, etc, etc, etc and bla, bla, bla.
So then, what does this suggest? The first thought that comes to my mind is about the several meanings the word church has; refer to Eric’s original post for a nice sample list.
1) I go to church on Sundays. [church means an organization formed to perpetuate and expand faith, religion, and its own significance and existance] note: faith is defined as divine sonship or daughterhood as an identity or sense-of-self. Religion is defined as ritual that may or may not be an outward expression of the inward identity of sonship or daughterhood. Note note: “identity” or “sense-of-self” incorporates the whole range of human agency—psychological, physical, spiritual, material, aesthetic, [i.e. beliefs and actions] etc, etc, etc.
2) The letter to the church in Rome . . . [church means a live-in community of people of faith]
3) You're one of those church-people. [church means “religious fanatic”]
4) The church is seated w/ the Christ in the heavenlies. [church means the whole body of humans who have been recreated into a new identity or sense-of-self, via the power of the Holy Spirit through the death and resurrection of Jesus]
This is my general take on a few of Eric’s examples, and may or may not represent the views of “the church.” So anyway, I guess what I am attempting to reach is my own current thoughts on the definition of church. For me, currently, it is behavior. This behavior is agency (actions) formed out of a growing identity as a son. As a created human being grafted into the royal bloodline of the imortal God. There is an air of humble nobility in this process. It incorporates pain and loss with joy and gain. It is the road less traveled [thank you Robert Frost]. A road of brutal inclines, amazing views. A road of constant failure and merciless grace. A road of peace and death and life. A road of companionship and lonliness.
And with this anticlimactic ambiguity, I digress.
Josh
By
Josh, at 12:45 PM
I agree, fundamentally, that language is fluid and that there is no inherent morality about how words come to be used. But I come back to the confusing issue of how we understand each other. The answer to confusion is, of course, a dialogue in which one can modify her understanding of the other as she gains more information. That is one level of purpose for this blogspace. The other level is, of course, mission—as we come to understand our mission and each individual’s place in that mission better through dialogue we become better equipped, or at least learn in what ways we need equipping. So, on the issue of ‘church,’ what I’m trying to get at is a better understanding of what we can make of a statement like “you ought to give money to the church.” What we mean by you and ought and church will make a world of difference on how we respond to this statement.
So, not because the biblical meaning is the only meaning that is right, but for the purpose of understanding mission and our place in it better, I would prefer to understand better what church means biblically. Why differentiation is important will, I think, become clear by the end of this post.
To keep it brief, I will not list the references, but they are available upon request, and I encourage rebuttals with specific instances. But, generally speaking, there are 2–4 biblical meanings for the word church in the Bible. The word itself is a translation of the Greek word ekklesia, from which we get our adjective ecclesial (the Latin-based languages words for church are closer to the Greek, ours is Germanic, I think). The word literally meant ‘called out/forth’ and generally refers to an assembly of some sort (in the sense of being ‘called’ to a gathering). It was used in the OT (LXX) to refer to the assembly of Israelites. The word was used in secular society as a description of a gathering of people in a public meeting place for the purpose of deliberation and also for any chance gathering of people—Luke seems to use both these meanings in Acts. But more importantly for our purposes are Paul’s uses: (1) the Messiah’s people gathered for worship; (2) the Messiah’s people regardless of being gathered or not; (3) the Messiah’s people within a particular political jurisdictions (e.g., the church in Rome) regardless of whether they all met together or not (this is really a subset of (2)). Note current usages of the term ‘church’ that are not represented in biblical language: an organization one joins (unless the organization is definition (2) above and joining is baptism); the leadership of said organizations; the rituals of the meeting of the Messiah’s people (the ‘service’); the building in which those rituals may occur.
Note that I have not said meetings and rituals aren’t important--they are. But I would like to start from scratch on what the proper referent of church is to understand better how and why meetings and rituals are important. This is, now, quite long. Let me allow others to respond to this or add their own thoughts. I’ll probably return to this in a week and try to explain some of my conclusions I take from this. But I’ll end with a quote from Pastor Ford at Christ Bible Church on the south side: “We have people on our roll that He doesn’t have on His, and He has people on His roll that we don’t have on ours!”
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Unknown, at 4:43 PM
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