YLV Bible Study

Ecclesia

If what we are trying to be has to be said in one word, this is the word.

What the word points at

When the New Testament writes ekklēsia (ἐκκλησία), the word did not mean a building. Ek (out) + kaleō (to call) — people called out and gathered. In a Greek city the word meant the assembly of citizens summoned into the square to decide together. Not a building but people who were called and came — that is an ecclesia.

So the first disciples had no need of a building. They set tables from house to house, and those tables were the ecclesia. Buildings came much later, and there is nothing wrong with them. What was lost is coming to think that without a building one cannot gather.

Brotherly love — action, not feeling

The New Testament speaks of the love inside this gathering with two words. Agape is love that pays a price and gives itself away; philadelphia is the affection between those born of one Father. Neither is a feeling. Both are action.

At a table it looks like this — noticing when someone does not come; being a place where the one who lost their job can say so; remembering a sick person's name all that week; knowing the names of one another's children. If that sounds like a great deal, it only shows how rare it has become.

Why it must stay small

When the numbers grow this becomes impossible. In front of thirty people no one says they are falling apart. At a table of six, they say it. So we do not make growth the goal. Past eight, we split.

It does not replace the church

So that there is no misunderstanding, plainly: this table is not a call to leave the church you belong to. If there is a gathering on Sunday and on Friday, keep that place first. That believers coming together at an appointed time is not to be taken lightly is the plain exhortation Hebrews left us.

A place at one table does not replace that worship; it is a place for what a large gathering finds hard — facing one another, calling each other by name, and reading a verse each aloud. Devoting themselves in the temple and breaking bread from house to house stood side by side in one sentence from the beginning.

But some are in circumstances that cannot reach the building. Those who work shifts and have no evenings, those who live far away, those who cannot leave a sick family member, and those who have not yet been able to settle their heart in any church. For them this table will be a first place. Begin here if you like. And when circumstances open, go on to the larger gathering as you should.