from Dave Black’s April 29 entry (http://www.daveblackonline.com/blog.htm):
5:58 PM Last Sunday, while driving in Dallas, I noticed time and again several Catholic churches that had the word "community" in their marques. Good for them. That is precisely the way I would translate the Greek word ekklesia. How can the church be the church? A good place to start is by paring away all the non-essentials and the verbiage that clutters and confuses. The basic meaning of ekklesia is a group of people that come together and have something in common, as opposed to a group of people that have come together and have nothing permanently in common (this latter idea is usually behind the Greek word ochlos, which is translated "crowd"). The great danger in most of our churches is that we confuse the physical plant with the church. The church is a people! So let the church be the church! What is the basis of this kind of human relationship? The New Testament teaches that the church is Christ's very own Body. Amazing but true: Because we are united with Him, we are united with everyone who follows Him in obedience and love. What a high view of the "church" we must have and teach! The church, this Christian "community," is God's laboratory in which we work out our functions as members of His Body. The Bible doesn't say we are to create this community. Jesus has already made it. But we are maintain it, we are to express it, and we are to extend it. This is such a unique concept that I wish our churches could express this concept better in our names. "Wake Forest Community Church" would be redundant: Wake Forest Community Community! Oh, may our churches become the communities of faith God intends for them to be!
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