Many people have misconceptions about what the word church means.
Most equate it with a building. But throughout the Scriptures, church and congregation refer
to people, never to a building. In fact, we find several verses
in the New Testament where the "church" (people) were meeting inside certain
members' homes (buildings) in the local area (Romans 16:3-5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; and Philemon 2).
The Church is made up of people called to follow Jesus Christ. That group
of people collectively is called "the body of Christ"
(1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 4:12). It is a spiritually transformed
body of believers not limited to a particular locale, organization or denomination.
The Holman Bible Dictionary, in its article "Church," explains
the background of the word church:
"Church is the English translation of the Greek word ekklesia. The
use of the Greek term prior to the emergence of the Christian church is
important as two streams of meaning flow from the history of its usage
into the New Testament understanding of church.
"First, the Greek term which basically means 'called out' was
commonly used to indicate an assembly of citizens of a Greek city
and is so used in Acts 19:32,39. The citizens who were quite conscious
of their privileged status over against slaves and noncitizens were called
to the assembly by a herald and dealt ... with matters of common concern.
When the early Christians understood themselves as constituting a church,
no doubt exists that they perceived themselves as called out by
God in Jesus Christ for a special purpose and that their status
was a privileged one in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:19).
