Another excerpt from
Koinonia:
What is it? Why do Christians need it? [1]
The Non-essential Ecclesia, [Part 1]
During the government response to COVID-19, many services and businesses were closed down while many others remained open. Businesses that were labeled “essential” continued to operate while those which were “non-essential” were closed down. Is there really such a thing as a “non-essential” business or occupation in our specialized society? What makes one business essential and another non-essential?
I could say a non-essential part to your car is your windshield wiper. You could do without it and still drive your car. But it really is essential. If car makers said we won’t include that on cars anymore, we would have problems. Either you couldn’t drive in the rain or people would be having more accidents!
Now, you might say that getting rid of the radio or the seat warmer would not have that big of an impact but you would find that your car driving would be less than it used to be. You would find yourself missing that item because there is value in it; it added to the car ride; it was essential in the bigger picture. The same goes for every vocation that is not based in sin. … Each vocation enriches our society and is an essential part of how our society is constructed and works for God created these various vocations to serve a purpose and bless our communities.
Yet, in emergencies or when families have to cut things out of their budget, you do have to prioritize. You have to figure out what you will give up and what you need to continue—what is most important to your continued welfare. So, the question remains whether we are talking about a pandemic, time management, our budget, or other times of trouble, “What are our priorities?” …
Church leaders found themselves asking this very question as they were often labeled by government proclamations as “non-essential.” … [W]hat the world thought of the church was clear: it wasn’t important. People didn’t need it—at least, they didn’t need it in person.
This fits with our society’s general view that religion is a personal affair. The corporate aspect of worship was not important… Whatever someone gets in worship can be received at home. But is this really the case?
I have visited several shut-ins in my time as a pastor and almost all of them longed to be back in church. They missed gathering together and were sad they couldn’t be with everyone else. Yes, they were very grateful for having the pastor bring church to them but it wasn’t the same. In a few instances, I had the chance to bring two shut-ins together or another church member to visit a shut-in and share in communion. These were precious moments in their life. …
Now, if shut-ins who had access to the Lutheran Hour (and TV church) and who had the pastor actually physically with them and had the Lord’s Supper in front of them longed to be at church, what does that tell you? There is no replacement for gathering together in church.
Of course, we could acknowledge this fact but still argue that church isn’t essential no matter how much you want it. … Is such a stance Christian? …
When we look throughout Scripture, we will see references to personal piety such as the admonition in Deuteronomy 6[2] to teach the faith to our children throughout the day and to have God’s Word ever before us—binding it to hands and writing it on doorposts. We have the example in and encouragement of the Psalms[3] to personally meditate on God’s Word daily. And the call is to everyone personally, “Repent! and let each one of you be baptized on the basis of the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38).
Yet, even as the call is personal and to the individual to believe and be baptized, the emphasis is on the gathering or assembly of God’s people. The Old Testament lays out regulations for the many gatherings and festivals and any other public acts of worship. These were corporate events, where Israelites would journey from all over to be gathered together at the same time at the tabernacle or temple. Leviticus 23:27 shows this, “But on the tenth [day] of this seventh new moon, the day of the atoning, that will be a holy assembly for you, and you will humble yourselves and bring an offering by fire to Yahweh[4].” They were meant to be observed as an assembly together—even those like the Passover had a corporate aspect to them. The animals would be slaughtered and dedicated at the temple and taken home to be shared and eaten by the whole household—or, if your household was small, then by more than one household gathered together celebrating under the same roof. [5] Exodus [12:3-4, 6] records:
“‘Speak unto all the gathering of Israel saying… take… a male lamb to the household of their fathers—a lamb to the household. And if the household is too small to have a lamb, he will take [it] and his neighbor, the one near unto his house with the number of beings of man according to his eating [as] you will reckon concerning the lamb. … And the whole convocation of the gathering of Israel will slaughter it between the evenings[6].’”
In the New Testament, the church is gathering from the beginning, even before Pentecost. Acts 1:15 records that Peter stands up and speaks before 120 gathered disciples. And following Pentecost, Acts 2:42, 46 notes that “they were holding fast to the teaching of the apostles and the communion/sharing” and”daily while not only spending time with one purpose in the temple but also while breaking bread from house to house, they were sharing food”while Acts 5:12 reports how “all were together in the portico of Solomon.”…
But perhaps most telling is the word chosen most often to refer to God’s people: “church”, or in Greek, ecclesia. This word means “assembly” and emphasizes a generally ordered gathering of people as opposed to a crowd or mob. … Ecclesia was a secular word usually referencing legal and even legislative assemblies of people to address community matters. These assemblies were expected to be orderly, which would not only put the church in a positive light before Rome but was also proper as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 14:33. So, rather than using religious worship words from paganism or utilizing the word that referred to the gathering of Israelites to hear the readings of the Scriptures and to be taught by rabbis, God’s people used a word that’s most basic meaning is “assembly.”[7]
It is here where we must pause and give attention to this word choice. While Christians co-opted a secular word and made it sacred, associating with this word many of the things we have come to regard as central to the word, it is backwards to somehow remove that foundational meaning upon which the apostles and the Holy Spirit built to redefine the word to address some present-day circumstance. This word wasn’t chosen haphazardly… The central meaning of “church” (ecclesia) then is a physical, orderly assembly of people.
This means to define the church as “virtual church” or to presume that the “assembly” can be in multiple places but united by technology rather than by location is an anti-Scriptural notion. This is not to say that we can’t use technology to communicate God’s Word but it is to say that we dare not call such “church.”
In fact, Scripture helps us to understand this by adding the phrase “at the same place” (epi to auto), that is “together”. This phrase appears in the Greek in Acts 1:15, 2:1, 44, 47, 4:26, 1 Corinthians 11:20, 14:23, Luke 17:35, and Matthew 22:34. [8] The emphasis in each of these instances is on the physical gathering together of people in one location and acting in unity in regards to whatever they are doing in the same place together. It is these kinds of references where we see that the physical gathering together of God’s people is important and even essential to what the church is.
This is why Paul teaches us and the Corinthians about the church using the image of the body. In 1 Corinthians 12:12–14, Paul writes, “For just as the body is one and has many members but all the many members of the body being one are the body, thus also the Christ. For we all also were baptized in one Spirit into one body. Whether Judeans or Greeks or slaves or free, we all were given to drink one Spirit. For even the body is not one member but many.” Paul clearly teaches that as the body is united so should the church be. “If the foot might say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not from the body,’ is it, because of this, any less from the body?… Nor is the eye able to say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:15, 21).The body is not to be divided up into multiple parts or spread out over a whole county, city, state, or larger area. The body is meant to be physically in one place and Paul draws on this image to say this is what the church is. The church cannot be a body if its parts have no need to be with the other parts. Worship is orderly when the body is gathered together and worshiping together in unity. There is to be no skisma, or “tear, crack, division” in the body (1 Corinthians 12:25). Paul is most certainly referencing the figurative aspect here—that the church cannot be and should not be divided on an issue or on doctrine. Still, we cannot help but understand that there shouldn’t be a “physical” division of the body, either. After all, Paul goes on to speak about the body caring for one another, which is primarily something that happens in the body and with and for the body.
This means that the “unity” of worshipping virtually is lacking—it is not the fullness of what is intended…. [Let us then re-consider the importance of gathering in person as God’s people, as the Church. As the Third Article of the Creed teaches us—we believe in the “communion of the saints”—we live out by gathering together and so receive the benefit that Christ intends for His Church to receive in that assembly. We together are encouraged and consoled, uplifted and prepared, strengthened and returned again to God’s path. God established this family for you and me through the blood of Christ for our benefit and blessing. Thanks be to God for this blessing and all that its fullness brings as we await the eternal assembly in the new heavens and earth.][9]
Loving Father, You have brought us together by the blood of Jesus to be a family gathered in Your presence, receiving Your gifts. You sent Your Son in the flesh to accomplish this and to weave us into His Body as Your people. Help us to cling to that assembly and not easily give it up. Where we have compromised Your intentions for Your Church, grant us repentance. When anyone of us is prevented from gathering with the body help us to make every effort to reach out and physically included them in any way possible just as You have reach out and included us all through the incarnation of Your Son Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.
[1] The following is an excerpt from a book. © Jason Krause 2020-2022, addition 2024, revisions 2025. Copied with permission. All rights reserved.
[2] Here is a portion of this passage: “’And these words which I command you today will be upon your heart. And repeat them to your sons and speak them in your resting, in your house, and in your walking on the road and in your lying down and your standing up. And tie them for a sign upon your hand and let them be for phylacteries between your eyes and write them upon your doorposts of your house and on your gates’” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).
[3] An example of this is found in Psalm 1:2, “But rather, the word/torah of Yahweh is his joy and he will ponder by muttering His word day and night.”
[4] Note: Yahweh is a rendering of the Hebrew of the divine name of God that He gave to His people to speak.
[5] Unger, 412.
[6] Note: “between the evenings” could also be rendered “in the twilight”.
[7] Marquart, 4–5; and BDAG, 303-304, exxclesia.
[8] The verses that use the Greek phrase epi to auto “at the same place” are as follows (with emphasis added):
Acts 1:15, “and in those days, after arising in the middle of the brothers, Peter spoke and the crowd of people at the same place was about 120.”
Acts 2:1, “And when the day of Pentecost approached, all were together at the same place.”
Acts 2:44, “And all the ones who were believing were at the same place and had all things in common.”
Acts 2:47, “while praising God and having grace toward the whole people. And the Lord added the ones who were being saved every day at the same place.”
Acts 4:26, “The kings of the earth were present and the rulers gathered together at the same place against the Lord and against His Christ.”
1 Corinthians 11:20, “Therefore, when you assemble together at the same place it is not to eat the Lord’s dinner.”
1 Corinthians 14:23, “Therefore, if the whole church/ecclesia might assemble together at the same place and all might speak in tongues and outsiders or unbelievers might enter in, will they not say that you are crazy?”
Luke 17:35, “Two will be grinding at the same place, the one will be taken but the other will be pardoned.”
Matthew 22:34, “But the Pharisees, after hearing that He silenced the Sadducees, gathered at the same place.”
[9] This section, as also the prayer, is not from the book but has been authored for the newsletter.