Several weeks ago someone asked me where the word "church" came from. My first response was to talk about the Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as church. On further reflection it occurred to me that ekklesia doesn't seem to have any connection to our English word, church. With a bit of research I discovered the answer; however you will have to wait for the end of this article to find out how they are related. Where I want to begin is with a discussion of the concept of the ekkelsia and how we got from there to here.
The word ekklesia was not originally a religious word. It had two secular meanings. The first meaning is that of people who are called out. In Greece when a city needed to gather its citizens for a discussion about a particular matter or to deal with issues of security a herald would move through the city "calling people out." The people would then gather for the meeting. The second meaning of ekklesia carries with it the image of those who had gathered. So the complete meaning in secular Greek was that the ekklesia was the called out and gathered together people…again without any religious connotation.
At first glance then it might appear that the early Christians simply borrowed that word from secular Greek and put it to work to describe this new people of God. However there is more to it than that. The word ekklesia had also been in use by the Jewish community for some time. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) the word ekklesia is used almost a hundred times in order to describe God's people. What sets the Biblical usage apart from its secular use is that in scripture ekklesia is always modified by "of the Lord." In other words the Hebrew people are the called out and gathered people of the Lord. This use of ekklesia makes sense in terms of the overarching story of God's people. The people of God were not those who happened to discover YHWH one day and decide to worship. It was always God (as we noted last week) who called people together for the purpose of being a blessing to the world.
When the early Christ followers used the term ekklesia then (Paul uses it extensively in this writings to refer to the Christ following community) they were not merely borrowing a secular term but were claiming the title of called out and gathered people of God for themselves. This makes sense when we understand their concept of who they were. Early Christians believed that in Jesus of Nazareth God had acted decisively to redeem the world. Through Jesus' death, resurrection and appearances to the disciples and others Jesus had initiated a new moment in history and called forth from the old ekklesia of God (traditional Judaism) a new ekklesia which was to proclaim Jesus as Lord and live in the Jesus' way (which is a reminder to us that the earliest followers of Jesus were called "The Way."). We need to be careful to note here that the Apostle Paul is clear that this new ekklesia is an extension of and not a replacement of the old ekkelsia. According to Paul the Jews are still God's people and the followers of Christ as merely a branch grafted into God's Old Testament ekkelsia.
The church then began to adopt other words which Judaism had used to describe their ekklesia of God. The church began to speak of themselves as the elect (God had chosen them) and saints (they were to lead God centered lives).
We are now led back to our original question of the origins of the word "church." The answer is that it is derived from the work of Theodoric the Great (454-526 CE). Theodoric was as an Ostrogothic King who ruled Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. He was an Arian Christian who spread the faith into Germany. Along the way he spoke of believers as kuriche, meaning those who belong to the Lord. From this we get such words as Kirche (German), Kirk (Scottish) and Kyrke (Swedish) and Church (English). Of interest is that Spanish (Ilgesia), French (eglise) and Italian (chiesa) maintain a clear sense of ekklesia. Regardless of the name, we are still the called out and gathered people of God.
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