This blog entry fulfills my promise in Sunday's message to explain one reason that English-speakers struggle so much to understand the term "church." That message- on Matthew 16:13-18-is also on this site.

We use the term "church" to refer to:

• A service- something that hapens
• A building- the place where it happens
• An organization- the way we make it happen
• An universal (or is it "a universal?")- all followers of Christ everywhere at all times.

If you think these distinctions are trivial allow me to illustrate. Today we had church at our church as a a service of our church that is an extension of Christ's universal Church. That should do it.

So why do we struggle so mightily? I'm glad you asked.

The word "church," in both the Old and New Testaments, is better translated in most instances by the term "congregation." A congregation is a gathering of people who get together- congregating.

We say that the right form of the kingdom of God on earth is is the congregation. Why? We can never see the universal church. What we can see, visibly, is individual followers of Christ congregating together. This picture of the church minimizes its institutional power and importance.

So we begin our story in 1600 (or so) AD, England, with a young man by the name of James. James was an ordinary boy except for the identity of his mother: Queen Mary, aka "Bloody Mary" for her violent oppression of nonCatholics in the British Empire. Remember that King Henry VIII had a falling out with the Roman Catholic Church in the previous century, so he started his own- The Church of England, with the King of England serving as its head. Mary was solidly Catholic and sought to end this entity.

James had an older brother (Arthur), so he was groomed to be a churchman, not king. His formal education began at age 3 with "preschool." I'm not making this up:

• Morning prayers, Greek, New Testament, Greek Classics
• Break for breakfast
• Latin, History
• Break for lunch
• Composition, Mathematics, Geometry, Rhetoric, Philosophy

James was a perverse man- I'll withhold the details for the sake of maintaining a G rating on this site. And when his brother Arthur died this would be theologian became king.

Forward to 1611: King James authorized an English Version of the Scriptures. He called it... the Authorized Version (gotcha). He gave his team of translators 14 translation rules, the third of which stated, "The Greek term ekklesia shall be translated 'church.'"

Why? The Church of England had power, and keeping that term in Scripture bolstered that power. Further, there was a guy in Rome who had a church- He called it the Universal (or Catholic) Church, and James was not to be outdone. And we've been struggling with the term "church" ever since.

Lesson? Christ is the head of His Church (Ephesians 4:15; 2:20), yet man is always drawn to its power. Remember that the congregation is not an institution; it is a gathering of God's people. So today when I say "go serve your King it is a call to be Christ's church as a member of your congregation.

Go serve your King,
PW