Did Christ establish two kinds of churches? (Part 2)

(Summary of Part 1: Scripture doesn’t teach a “universal church”).

But isn’t the church the “body of Christ,” and aren’t all Christians part of “the body of Christ”?

Yes, it is. And no, they’re not.

Paul uses the metaphor of the human body (eyes, ears, hands, feet) to describe the ekklesia, the summoned assembly: different members with different gifts working together as one functional unit. “[T]he body is not one member, but many…whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (I Cor. 12: 14, 26). The members of a local church are one body for Christ, one body in Christ, one body established by Christ. “Now ye [the church at Corinth] are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (I Cor. 12: 27). So the “body” metaphor refers to each individual assembly—not a composite of all those assemblies.

You are not in the same ekklesia as a Christian man in China. If he suffers, you cannot suffer with him. You don’t even know him. If he is unrepentant about a public sin, you cannot “tell it unto the church” (Matt. 18: 17). Who are you going to tell? The two of you are not members of the same functional body. Such an amorphous affiliation as a “universal church” can never be the organized, effective unit that Christ intended when he said “I will build my church [ekklesia]” (Matt. 16: 18).

But aren’t all Christians somehow “related”?

Of course. We are all part of the Kingdom. We have one King presiding over us from Heaven. We are each members of our own ekklesias, which are orderly assemblies meant to spread the Kingdom. We don’t all belong to the exact same ekklesia, anymore than all schoolchildren belong to the same school. But we are all in the same Kingdom and share the same purposes, which are to be achieved through our individual ekklesias, each working in its own sphere of influence and encouraging the others. One day, too, we will all be members of a larger assembly—a general assembly of all saints in Heaven. But all the saints won’t constitute a summoned assembly until then.

Why does it matter anyway? What’s wrong with teaching a “universal church”?

Well, if you are automatically a member of Christ’s “universal church” then joining a local ekklesia becomes an afterthought. This is why Satan triumphs when Christians buy into the idea of membership in the “universal church.” The allegedly-ideal “universal church” sure beats the local assembly with its personality quirks and flaws, doesn’t it? So many Christians become slack in seeking out an ekklesia where they can grow in the Word, edify each other, and spread the Kingdom.

The individual local assemblies, weakened by their own identity crises, give way to para-church organizations that appear to offer better “central unifying principles”: associations, conventions, seminaries, and national youth groups. Ekklesias have been redefined as mere buildings where these para-church groups hold sway, while self-professed members of the “universal church” float aimlessly in and out of them, receiving no discipleship or doctrinal training from the church leadership itself. For many modern Christians, the ekklesia has become the red-headed stepchild of God’s ultimate plan.

But the ekklesia--the functional local assembly--was the sole institution created by Christ to spread the Kingdom to all nations until “every tongue shall confess God” (Rom. 14: 11).

For more on this topic here are good articles by Thomas Williamson and Glenn Kerr, and a good book called Ecclesia by B. H. Carroll.

Did Christ establish two kinds of churches? (Part 1)

Pop quiz: is this a) an ekklesia, b) a kirche, or c) a universal church?

Most pastors I know teach that there are two kinds of churches. Once you are saved, they say, you automatically become a member of Christ’s church, which is an invisible organism composed of all believers worldwide, living and dead. They call this the “universal church.” Later, if you wish, you can join up with a more quaint and less pure local assembly, which is also called “the church.”

But does the Bible really teach two kinds of churches? Specifically, does it speak of a “universal church”? I don’t think it does. I think the idea of two churches is confusing and self-contradictory and ultimately weakens the institution that Christ established to spread the gospel message.

The words “church” and “churches” appear about 115 times in Scripture. With one exception, the word is always translated in the original Greek as ekklesia (in one instance, the English translators loosely used the word “churches” in reference to particular buildings--specifically, pagan temples). So ekklesia is the only word used to describe the New Testament church. Ekklesia has a specific meaning: it literally means “called out” or “summoned.” Christ did not invent the word: it was commonly used in that time to refer to “a summoned assembly”—such as the “town council” meetings in ancient Greece. The disciples would have interpreted it to mean not just “an election” but “an assembly of the elect.” Today we might use a term like “congress.” Of course a nebulous universal affiliation cannot assemble or convene.

[The English word “church,” by the way, is taken from the German kirche which refers to an actual building, making the whole discussion even more confusing since nowadays we wrongly think of a church as a building.]

There is no separate Greek phrase in Scripture connoting a “universal church” as opposed to an ekklesia. This fact alone is enough to do away with the teaching of a separate universal church. There is no passage in Scripture that claims there are two different kinds of churches. There is no passage that explains the differences between two such “churches.” There is no passage that suggests the word ekklesia is to have more than one definition.

The confusion comes when the word “church” is used in the singular. Christ and the New Testament writers sometimes use the generic singular to describe something that is plural. For example, “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5: 23). Here Paul is using the idea of a generic church rather than one specific local assembly. He no more means that there is a “universal church” than he means that there is a “universal husband.” In fact, the concept of a universal husband is as much an impossibility as the concept of a universal local assembly. So this usage is the generic singular: each husband is the head of each wife, even as Christ is the head of each ekklesia. Here is another example: “…if he [the unrepentant church member] shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church” (Matt. 18: 17). He doesn’t say, “tell it unto the church at Jerusalem,” or some other specific local assembly, because He means the principle to apply to all churches, plural.

Yet another example is found in Mathew 16: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). This does not mean “I will build one church only,” but rather, “I will build my (generic) kind of assembly.” If God had said in the Garden of Eden, “I will establish the family,” we would plainly understand that He was using the generic singular to describe multiple units of one type. The same applies to “the church”: an ideal type, manifested as multiple real individual assemblies.

Once we understand the usage of the generic singular, the doctrine of a “universal church” becomes less tenable and less necessary.