Last year I wrote a piece called The Church is the biggest enemy of the church. I talked about the Reformers’ distinction between the visible church — i.e. the ‘church’ we see on earth — and the invisible church, i.e. what the creed speaks of when it says “one holy, catholic and apostolic church.” I said there that the visible church was actually hindering the invisible.

Since writing that piece, I have thought a lot about the nature of the church (you can read some of my thoughts in the Rethinking Church series). It occurred to me recently that I should have gone even further. I want to argue here that the more we use the word ‘church’ to refer to anything other than the church in the Biblical sense, the more damage we do to the true church. I want us to stop using the word ‘church,’ where possible, to refer to anything other than the church as God defines it.

Let me give a couple of reasons why I now believe this to be the case.

#1: The words we use are more powerful than we realise

I believe that words and ideas are powerful: as the old saying goes, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Our words reveal what is in our hearts, and “everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken” (Matthew 12:36). You can see just how seriously God takes our words by considering that he included ‘bearing false witness’ in the Ten Commandments. By contrast, God never lies (Titus 1:2), and his words are powerful and always accomplish what he desires (Isaiah 55:10-11).

The Enemy realises the power of words, and that is why so many of the arguments we have are about words. For example, the debate about same-sex marriage and more recently transgender has been framed in terms of ‘rights.’ This has been done intentionally, and very cleverly, because being against ‘rights’ today is seen to be anti-human and immoral. “What kind of person would be against rights? What are you, a monster?!?” Similarly, the word ‘pandemic’ has been thrown around so much over the last few years that people simply take it for granted that there was one, without considering what the definition of a pandemic is. So many of the debates today involve words being thrown around which have become detached from their definitions.

What this means for us is that we should be very careful with how we use words. Words have the power to communicate truth, but they also have the power to lead us astray. We must not use them thoughtlessly or carelessly, but choose the most appropriate words we can to best convey the truth. Our model should be ‘The Teacher’ from Ecclesiastes:

Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.
Ecclesiastes 12:9-10

The teacher “searched to find just the right words” — a great example for us today!

Although I think this does apply to our everyday speech, its primary focus is the words we use ‘officially’ or regularly. This is because there is a greater danger to our thinking from words we use regularly rather than an off-the-cuff comment or casual conversation. If we repeat a lie often enough, it will lead us astray — even if it is done unintentionally, even if we claim to believe the correct things. I believe this is what has happened with the church.

As I said in the Rethinking Church series, the word ‘church’ in the Bible never refers to any of the following:

• Buildings. The early Christians most often met in houses, and this continued for approximately the first 200 years of the church’s history.
• Institutions or denominations. There were no denominations in the early days, there was no human institution called ‘the church’.
• Meetings. The church would regularly meet or gather together, but it was never called ‘church’ in the way that we use the word today.

The New Testament makes clear time and again that the ‘church’ refers to the people. Nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes it can refer to a particular group of people who meet in a particular house (Romans 16:5); sometimes it refers to all the Christians in a particular town (1 Corinthians 1:2), and sometimes it can refer to all Christians everywhere (Ephesians 3:10; the ‘invisible church’ that I was talking about at the beginning).

If the Church of England and every denomination disappeared today, along with every church building, the church would still exist just as it always has.

One of the things I’ve come to understand over the last few years is that actions matter more than what we say we believe. We can claim to believe something with our lips but our actions might tell a very different story. Philosophers such as James K.A. Smith have recognised that our actions and habits shape us more than what we say we believe.

Think about how that applies to ‘church’: every church I’ve been a part of has proclaimed verbally that the church is ‘the people’. But when they actually use the word ‘church’ — which is often — it almost never refers to ‘the people’. If we continually refer to buildings, institutions, or meetings as ‘church’, why should we be surprised when people don’t really understand what church is? Even worse, given how fundamental the church is to the Christian life, isn’t it inevitable that this will lead people to wrong views about the Christian life?

This is exactly what I believe has happened with the church. If we don’t proclaim with everything we do and say that church is the people, and that loving one another is the goal, people will miss the point — and, tragically, many have.

#2: The visible church is masking the true church.

Over the summer, I read the second book in Winston Churchill’s series A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (my daughter is reading it this year in home school). This covers the time period from the Reformation up until the mid 17th century, including the English civil war. One of the things which struck me many times as I was reading about this turbulent period of British history was how so much of it was about control of ‘the church’: not the church in the Biblical sense, but what came to be known as the Church of England. Much blood was spilt over the nature of the church and whether it should be Protestant or Catholic.

I’ve just been reading about the history of the Puritans, and there were many pastors who were deprived of livings or even put to death because there were things in the Church of England that their consciences would not allow them to accept. It seems baffling to us today how wars should have been fought over these issues. How can it have been seen as the right thing to do to execute someone because they, in conscience, believed that bishops were unbiblical, or they could not accept some of the lines in the Book of Common Prayer? The reason is because the Church was not seen as a spiritual reality which people belong to by faith, but as a human institution which needed to be controlled by political means. Because the Church wielded a lot of secular power in those days, it was vital for it to be on board with the rulers’ agenda. Similarly, I think people who wanted the best for the church and wanted to serve God nonetheless were drawn into politics for that reason.

At this point I am not writing to cast judgement on those who lived centuries ago and had a very different view to us in the 21st century. I believe God allowed what happened then to happen for a reason. That said, the situation we are facing today, and the challenges we are facing, are very different to what they faced in the 16th century, and we need to adapt accordingly.

Another problem with seeing the church this way is that ‘pastor’ can become a job title and not a spiritual role. Many pastors and priests today have effectively become managers — they think their job is to keep church activities running. I can’t speak for other denominations, but in the CofE so much of the job is taken up with admin and meetings, while fundamental spiritual things have been relegated to a small corner. In my experience, most pastors today don’t think their role is (a) very relational / about love; (b) about the holiness and purity of the church. This is, again, encouraged by the institutional ‘church’ thinking. “Well I must be a pastor because it says that on my payslip; plus I’m doing loads of churchy stuff…”

The final problem with the way we use ‘church’ today is that it makes it possible, even easy, for people to deceive themselves that they are part of the church. I’m convinced that so many people up and down the country are being led astray by “going to church” on a Sunday, or being part of the “Church of England” (or other denomination) — they think that in itself is enough to fulfil the requirements to be a Christian. I can think of people at the church I used to be part of who I’m sure had this kind of attitude — they would rock up to a service occasionally, have a quick chat, and then be off on their merry way not to be seen again for a few weeks. Their lives would often look virtually indistinguishable from those of non-Christians. They thought that being part of some earthly activity or institution called ‘church’ made them part of the church, as if all God required of us was to turn up every so often and tick a box.

This is why so much of the church in the Western world at the moment is shallow and ineffective. People think that being part of the church is turning up on a Sunday (sometimes, when it’s not too much effort). A few people go the other way and think that being a Christian means filling their time with being on every rota and going to every event that the church puts on. I would certainly have been in this latter camp up until about 2020. Either way, the important thing is the association with an earthly institution rather than simply playing a part in God’s church.

Of course, if New Testament teaching about holiness and the purity of the church was being followed, this wouldn’t be an issue. The apostles warned us solemnly to separate from unbelievers (e.g. 2 Corinthians 6:14-18). We should distance ourselves from false teachers, and people who are living worldly lives should be warned and then put out of the church. I believe that the New Testament envisions that the church will seek to keep the visible close as close to ‘the church’ as possible. However, church purity has become unfashionable today, and it’s almost unheard of for anybody to be excluded from a church — and if they were, they could simply go to the church down the road who would welcome them with open arms.

It strikes me that the problem with church discipline is a lot to do with the problem of what we call church in the first place. The more ‘church’ becomes about earthly things — i.e. buildings, events, institutions — the less it’s going to be about spiritual things. If ‘pastors’ are too busy running events to get to know their flock and look after them spiritually, can people be blamed for not taking their faith seriously?

Time for radical action?

I believe the problem we are facing is so serious that radical action is called for. Effectively, this means I want to erase the word ‘church’ from our vocabulary for anything that is not ‘church’ in the Biblical sense. That means, cutting out referring to buildings, meetings, or denominations as ‘churches’. We need to encourage people day by day to see that the church is the people, and — importantly — everything this implies for how we live.

The primary thing Jesus calls us to, as I have said here ad nauseam, is to love one another. This is the supreme command, this is how God shows his wisdom to the world:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35

Jesus didn’t say, “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you’re on every single rota at your local church.” No, it’s not about rotas, it’s about love. I’ve come to believe that visible church so often gets in the way of that: people think it’s about being on rotas, or serving on teams and committees, or renovating buildings, or the like — they forget that it’s literally about loving one another. I think we need to take an extended break from the rotas — if not ditch them completely — so we can allow God to step in and reset our priorities.

I appreciate this might leave you with a lot of questions — such as, what should happen, then, to the Church of England or other established denominations? Should they simply cease to exist?

I would answer that these questions are ‘above my pay-grade’. It’s not my place to say what happens to the Church of England, or any other denomination. It’s not my place to say what should happen to old church buildings. I used to feel sad when I saw them being sold and turned into private houses, but now I wonder whether it might even be a good thing.

The important thing to remember is that God has not called us to sort out the problems of the world, we need to leave that to him. Instead, we have the responsibility of obeying him in our own lives. Our own attitudes and lives are in view here:

• Do WE see church as primarily a building, an institution, or a particular gathering? Do WE see being a Christian primarily as revolving around that building or institution?
• Or, do WE see church as being primarily about the people? Are WE seeking to love them with God’s help, regardless of whether we meet in a building or on a Sunday or under the banner of an institution?

Since leaving our previous church over three years ago, a small group of us have been meeting in our living room on a Sunday morning. It started out looking more like traditional church, but over time God has stripped many of those things away. Today, we still meet every week, we still sing songs, read the Bible, and pray together — but it’s so much more informal and relational. We don’t have rotas, we don’t have ‘orders of service,’ or anything like that. We spend a lot of time chatting and catching up with each other’s news, and we usually have lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon together. In other words although we don’t look like what most people think of as ‘church’, I think we’ve become far more like church in the biblical sense. I hope that many more people will take this path.

I appreciate that what I am calling for is radical, and some may say I’m idealistic. My response is, the world needs people at the moment to be idealists. If we’re not challenging the status quo, and trying to pull it in the right direction, nothing will ever change. Even if it’s like trying to change the direction of an oil tanker, we might as well try to pull it in the right direction and trust that, if this is from God, he will changes things even in ways beyond our imagination.

Postscript: Christian involvement in public life

One of the questions you might have about what I’ve been saying is, does this mean the church should retreat into a small alcove, away from public life in this country? I think the opposite is the case. I’d love to see Christianity and Christian teaching being a more fundamental part of government and workplaces. I’d love to see it taking a fundamental place in education, e.g. for every child to be catechised. I’d love to see Christianity being normalised in this country, in a way that it used to be before — even more so.

My issue here is not with Christianity being taught in public, or affecting public life. I’m simply saying that I don’t think we should call something ‘the church’ when it is not. What that means, we’ll need to work out as we go along, but that’s a start…