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Five years ago, I wrote a post called “Blurring the distinctions.” The purpose of that post is to show that the distinctions that we often make between “local church” and “universal church” are not as easy to find in Scripture. In fact, when Paul is writing about the church, he often uses terms and descriptions that alternate back and forth between what we would often call ̶...

I’ve suggested on this blog (many, many times) that the Greek term ekklesia (which has been translated “church”) refers to a gathering of people (or “assembly”). This means that God’s ekklesia (God’s church) is an assembly of people who belong to him – that is, a gathering of people who are disciples of Jesus Christ. I’m not suggesting anything that hasn’...

Three years ago, I wrote a post called “I will build my charitable organization.” The post was a response to another very good post that I had read. I wrote this post to encourage people to think about what Jesus meant when he said, “I will build my church.” Did he have in mind the things that we think about when we think about “church”? Some would say, “Yes,” but ma...

Often, in my short noon posts, I link to a blog post written by another blogger. This time, I’m going to link to two different blog posts by the same blogger. The blogger is Bobby from “Deconstructing Neverland.” And, I’m going to link to his posts in the reverse order that he published them… for a reason. First, in his post called “What does local church look like?” Bobby...

I’ve invited several people to write “guest blog posts” for this blog. There are several reasons for this: 1) To offer different perspectives. 2) To generate even more discussion and conversation between blogs. 3) To introduce other bloggers to my readers. (If you are interested in writing a guest blog post, please contact me at aknox[at]sebts[dot]com.) Today’s post was written by Blake Sorensen. ̵...

I want to highlight (what I think is) an awesome comment left by Scott on my post “The exclusivity of the modern local church.” In that post, I had argued that the modern concept of “local church” tends to separate Christians from one another, such that we see each other as ekklesia (“church”) only when gathered within the context of that “local church” (but not a su...

When I read about the ekklesia (“church” – or literally translated “assembly”) in Scripture, I get the sense that there is more fluidity and inclusiveness among the followers of Jesus than what we see today. Today, the idea of the “local church” tends to include only certain believers while excluding all others. For example, imagine that there are four different “loc...

I enjoy reading John’s blog. His posts are always encouraging and usually stretch me in thinking about Jesus Christ. His latest post is no different: “Getting Reacquainted with the Ekklesia.” At the beginning of the post, John explains why he has decided not to use the English term “church,” and instead to use the transliteration “ekklesia.” While I do continue to use the ...

Jonathan at “Jon’s Journey” has written many good posts. But, his last two posts are right on the mark. In the first post, “Recognize Church,” he lists various common misconceptions concerning what defines the church… things like buildings, Sunday morning events, organization… and you could add leadership, or membership, or many other things. So, what does define the churc...

As Dave Black has mentioned on his blog (see his post from Friday, July 15, 2011 at 6:34 p.m.), he has asked me to teach the Book of Acts in his New Testament class. I’ve decided to title the lecture “The Church by Example in the Book of Acts.” Obviously, I can’t cover the entire book in one 3 hour session. (In fact, I think I will only have about 2 hours or so, which further limits what I ...