Clear or unclear, the church building
Church constitution – 1
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I made a start on a stand-alone article on this topic as one of my ‘Ad hoc’ articles, but thinking about it again more recently I thought it would make a good, stand-alone series that I could develop over time. You can still read that original article if you like, in which we considered how to define the most fundamental activities in a church meeting, something we’ll return to in the second part of this new series.
But something I didn’t consider was why we have and use the term ‘church’ at all. It’s come to mean those buildings in most towns and cities in the world where Christians gather on Sundays (and often at other times, too) to read Bible passages, listen to sermons, take communion, and in some denominations have one or more leaders at the front wearing funny clothes (or ordinary ones). That’s a sort of caricature of course. Churches and church members often do much more than that. They may run a food bank, hold evening meetings to study the Bible more deeply, visit local hospitals to visit patients, and a whole lot more besides. But these activities are not church; in a sense they are add-ons, though they are certainly good things to be doing in the communities where we live.
Places or people?
But why are they called ‘churches’ in the first place? This is fascinating; over time, people have used both place-words and people-words for gatherings. Church is a place-word and we could also mention a series of other place-words used in different times and languages to express the same concept. For example kyriakón / Kirche / kirk, as well as basilica, cathedral, and chapel.
All of these in one way or another are used to signify places of gathering.
Kyriakón is from Kyrios, the Greek word for lord or master. Kirche is German, kirk is Scots, and church is of course English. Whatever their derivation they all speak of a place.
In a Roman city the Basilica had the appearance of a traditional European church building. Two rows of large columns supporting arches and a high roof, with a semi-circular and sightly raised area at one end. So architecturally it was church-like but was not a place of worship. It was the Roman law court and the judges sat on the raised area in the apse (the semi circular end section).
The Greek word cathedra simply means a chair, a cathedral is the ‘seat’ of a bishop. The word chapel is Latin, from cappa a mantle or cloak. It entered English in the 13th century from old French.
Going back to Hebrew and Aramaic is interesting too. Hebrew was used in the Jerusalem Temple and to read the Old Testament scrolls in the synagogues. Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic in everyday life. Synagogue is a Greek word and means an assembly or gathering, literally a bringing together (the New Testament was written in Greek and there were well-established Greek versions of the Old Testament as well). The Greek term packages up two Hebrew words, edah (congregation or community – a people word), and qahal (summoned or called together – a people/action/place word). After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Greek term synagogue was used to bundle up the senses of gathering, learning and intercession.
There were other words for the buildings themselves. Beit ha-knesset is the house of assembly, Beit ha-midrash is house of study/interpretation, Beit ha-tefillah is house of prayer.
No need for a name
Taking all of this together we can see that when we meet, wherever that might be, it’s a place, a gathered people, and has senses of assembling, study/interpretation, and prayer. So where can we gather to achieve all of that? Anywhere we like! We have only to agree a time and place to turn up together to pay attention to Jesus. Anywhere will do. It could be the temple courts, the upper room, my house, your house, a garden, a woodland clearing, a supermarket car park, or it could be somewhere we call a baptist church or a house church. The place itself is of no significance, all of the significance rests in the fact that Jesus is here and we are with him, that he is teaching us and we are learning ever more from him. Have you ever been in a place like that? Does it need a name? I’m going to provisionally call it a House of Presence or a House of the Spirit.
But the constitution of the Church doesn’t need to name things. So we won’t define a name in our constitution at all. We should include a note to say that a name is not required, it’s important to state that because the name doesn’t help to define church. Why did the 1st Century believers talk about Lydia’s House. or the gathering at Corinth? Because they knew what we have have often forgotten – it’s no more than a matter of convenience. We can (and should) meet anywhere; a river bank is enough, or a market place, someone’s home or a hired room.
It’s not the place that matters, it’s the people and the purpose that are significant, the presence of the Spirit of Jesus in his gathered people is what really matters. However, it’s worth mentioning that big spaces with hundreds of people are usually too large for very practical reasons. There’s a need to sit around with no more than one to ten other people. Everyone needs to know one another, like a family, everyone needs to be able to share freely what the are reading or hearing from the Spirit. If it’s big and impersonal many opportunities will be missed. We can come together in larger numbers with a band of musicians to celebrate and sing our hearts out. That’s good too, but it’s a different kind of meeting. But it’s still an expression of church and life together.
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has sometimes been described as the constitution of the church, but that’s not strictly correct. Paul didn’t write Ephesians to define what church is and is not, so it contains much more than the bare bones of a definition. Constitutions are (relatively) brief but very clearly lay out the essence and limits of something, be it an organisation like a business, a charity, or indeed a nation. They also spell out definitions of terms as well as the concept being defined, as clearly as possible. So if we want a constitution for the church, we must think in terms of something succinct, crystal clear, and complete but not providing unnecessary or irrelevant additional detail.
Why have a constitution?
The church has never truly had a constitution, some might argue it doesn’t need one. But recently I’ve begun to feel it does. Almost every denomination imposes customs and requirements on their adherents, over and above anything that Jesus taught. There are paid leaders and managers, forms of infant baptism, doctrine, so much encrusted over the basics. So much that can be seen as unnecessary when we compare it to the earliest forms of church or to what we learn from the New Testament. Some form of declarative constitution might bring much needed clarity to the current confusion.
Over the centuries there have been repeated reforms and corrections, but generally these have resulted in yet more varieties of belief and practice. A constitution might help, I think we should at least make an attempt to form one.
So first of all, why would we even want a church constitution? There are probably as many definitions as there are denominations, and that’s quite a large number; a constitution provides clarity and a reference point. The Bible, and even just the New Testament is far too detailed to be a definition; yet it contains everything we need to know and does not support the additions and concretions of the last two millenia.
The essentials, but no more
What else can we say about constitutions in general? The key point, I think, is that a constitution should contain everything essential but nothing beyond that. Constitutions are usually amendable both for corrections and for additions or deletions. There is normally an agreed process for amending a constitution.
So where would we begin for the church? As always, we must begin with our source – Jesus himself.
A good start would be to state that church is defined by everything that Jesus is and does and teaches and by nothing beyond that. Having leaders of a particular flavour or style and how we name those leaders are not fundamental. Whether you have a priest, a vicar, a pastor, elders or deacons, those are all secondary features of church life and practice. They cannot form part of the definition.
Let’s begin by saying church is a group of people striving to follow Jesus. I don’t think we can start in any better way.
So we’ll make that our primary clause.
The Constitution of church so far
1 – Church is not a particular place or building. It is, instead, a particular people.
We’ll take that as the first clause of our Constition for now
See also:
- Christian church – Wikipedia
- Constitution – Wikipedia
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