The word is ekklesia, and it appears 114 times in the New Testament.
In most English Bibles, it is translated as “church.”
But the word Jesus and His disciples were using was not a new religious term invented for Christianity.
It was an ordinary Greek word already in common use, and the people who heard it for the first time understood it immediately.
Understanding what it meant to them is one of the most clarifying moves you can make in reading the New Testament.
The Word Before Jesus Used It
Before ekklesia became the New Testament word for the community of Jesus’s followers, it had a long life in the secular Greek world.
What Greeks Understood by It
In classical Greek, ekklesia referred to the assembly of citizens who would gather in the public square (the agora) to conduct civic business: voting, making decisions, and listening to officials.
The word comes from two Greek roots: ek (out of) and kaleo (to call or summon).
Together, they describe people who have been called or summoned out of their homes to gather for a common purpose.
The emphasis is on the gathering itself, not primarily on the act of separation from something.
It was a civic, communal word.
A Word That Appears in the Wrong Places
The secular origin of ekklesia shows up in a revealing way in Acts 19.
When the silversmiths of Ephesus incited a riot over Paul’s preaching, the Greek text uses the same word ekklesia three times to describe the riotous crowd and the subsequent legal assembly.
The city clerk eventually dismisses the ekklesia and tells the crowd to bring complaints through proper legal channels.
Paul and his followers were not present.
This was not a Christian gathering.
The word simply meant “assembly.”
What made the New Testament use distinctive language was not the word itself but what kind of assembly it described and who had called it.
What Ekklesia Actually Means
The Honest Lexical Picture
The common teaching that ekklesia means “the called-out ones” is partially accurate but needs nuance.
Being called or summoned is in the etymology, but the word’s primary meaning is “assembly” or “gathering.”
The call-out is the summons. The gathering is the point.
Why This Matters
Reducing ekklesia to “those separated from the world” pictures the church as primarily withdrawn.
But the Greek civic assembly was summoned to engage, deliberate, and act.
The New Testament ekklesia inherits that active, gathered, purposeful quality.
A pastor I heard of spent years teaching his congregation that “church” was something they attended.
He said the shift came when he finally explained what ekklesia actually meant.
The phrase “I go to church” suddenly sounded, to his congregation, like saying “I go to people.”
It exposed an assumption they had never examined.
When Jesus Said It
Jesus used ekklesia only twice in the Gospels.
Both uses are in Matthew.
The more important one is Matthew 16:18.
NIV “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
What the Setting Reveals
Jesus said this at Caesarea Philippi, a pagan site near a temple dedicated to the god Pan and widely known as a gateway to the underworld.
He was standing at the edge of everything His kingdom opposed.
And He declared that what He was building would not be overcome.
The word He chose, ekklesia, was not religious.
It was a civic, communal word: an assembly of people gathered by a summons.
The implication was that the same authority that summoned citizens to the public square was being exercised by Jesus to call people out of the old order into a new community.
What “I Will Build” Signals
The future tense is significant: “I will build.”
Jesus was announcing something not yet fully constructed at that moment.
He was not describing a building or an institution but a community that would be gathered through His own initiative.
He would be its founder, its architect, and the source of its summons.
How the New Testament Uses It
After Pentecost, ekklesia becomes the primary word for the communities of Jesus followers.
Local and Universal
In many places, ekklesia refers to specific local gatherings: the church in Corinth, in Ephesus, in someone’s house.
In Ephesians and Colossians, Paul uses it for the whole people of God across all places and times.
Both are valid uses showing the community of Jesus followers is simultaneously local and universal.
Paul’s Body Metaphor
Ephesians 1:22–23 describes Christ as the head of the ekklesia, His body.
A body is not a voluntary association you join and leave; it is the organism through which you live.
If the ekklesia is His body, what the church does together is how Jesus continues to act in the world.
The Gathered Assembly in Acts
Acts 2:42–47 is the earliest description of what the ekklesia did once it existed.
Its members devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
They met daily in the temple and in homes.
They shared possessions and cared for one another.
This is ekklesia in motion: a gathered community that transformed the daily lives of its members and became visible to the world around it.
A woman I know describes her first encounter with a genuinely functioning small church community as “the first time I understood that Christians actually meant what they sang on Sunday.”
Something was happening when they gathered that made the rest of the week different.
Why It Matters That This Is Not a Building
The most practical consequence of understanding ekklesia is that it dismantles the building-centered imagination of “church.”
The Building Is Not the Issue
Having a building is not wrong.
But if “church” becomes primarily a place you go rather than a community you belong to, something essential has been lost.
No first-century Christian had a designated church building; the building followed the community, not the other way around.
What Gets Restored When You Understand This
When people grasp that the ekklesia is the people and not the place, several things change.
Membership becomes about the relationship rather than attendance.
Responsibility for the community becomes shared rather than delegated to professionals.
The question shifts from “what did I get out of the service?” to “what did we offer God and each other today?”
Someone I heard of left a church after two decades because he had never been known there.
He sat in the same building for twenty years without anyone knowing his name.
The building had been confused with the ekklesia, and he had paid the price.
What Being Ekklesia Demands
Understanding the word is only the beginning.
Ekklesia is not a theological category to hold; it is a community to inhabit.
Called Into Active Participation
The civic ekklesia was summoned to deliberate and decide.
The Christian ekklesia is summoned to worship, to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), to make disciples (Matthew 28:19), and to be the presence of Christ in a specific place.
Every member is active, not passive.
Called Into Visibility
The ekklesia was always a public assembly.
The civic gathering in the agora was visible to everyone who walked by.
The New Testament ekklesia is called to the same kind of visible presence.
Matthew 5:14 says the community of Jesus is a city on a hill: it cannot be hidden.
The church’s calling is not to withdraw from the world but to be distinctly present in it.
What Christians Are Really Asking About Ekklesia in the Bible
Is Ekklesia the same thing as “church”?
Ekklesia is translated as “church” in most English Bibles. The words overlap significantly in meaning, but “church” has accumulated connotations of buildings and institutions that ekklesia does not carry. Ekklesia more precisely means “assembly” or “gathering,” emphasizing the people who gather rather than the place they meet.
Does Ekklesia mean “called-out ones”?
Partially. The etymology includes ek (out of) and kaleo (to call or summon). But the word’s primary usage describes the assembly itself, not the separation. The emphasis is on the communal gathering that results from being called, not primarily on being separated from something.
Who first used Ekklesia to describe Christians?
Jesus used it in Matthew 16:18 and Matthew 18:17. After Pentecost, the apostles consistently used it to describe communities of followers in specific cities. Paul made it his primary term for both local congregations and the universal body of Christ across all places and times.
Why does understanding Ekklesia matter practically?
It challenges the assumption that the church is a building you attend. When you understand that ekklesia is the gathered people, membership shifts from attendance to participation and relationship. The community becomes the point, and the building becomes, at most, a tool in service of that community.
Is the Ekklesia local or universal?
Both. The New Testament uses it for specific local gatherings (the ekklesia in Corinth, in houses, in individual cities) and for the whole people of God across time and place (Ephesians 1:22–23). Neither use excludes the other. The local gathering is simultaneously part of the universal body.
What is the relationship between Ekklesia and the kingdom of God?
The ekklesia is the community through which the kingdom of God becomes visible. Jesus builds it in connection with His declaration of messianic reign (Matthew 16:18). The church does not equal the kingdom but is the primary instrument through which it is proclaimed and embodied.
As the Gathered Assembly
Lord, we have sometimes treated the word “church” as a destination.
A building to enter and a service to complete.
But You are building an ekklesia: a gathered people, called together by Your summons, organized around Your presence.
Make us that.
Not just attenders but participants.
Not just residents of the same building but genuinely known to one another.
Called out. Called together. Sent into the world.
Let the assembly we form be worthy of the One who called it.
Amen.
What This Post Consulted
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Bible Study Tools. (n.d.). Ekklesia meaning, definition, and commentary.
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Christianity.com. (n.d.). What is Ekklesia? Understanding the biblical meaning of church.
(n.d.). What is the meaning of Ekklesia? Christian Courier Blog.
Ligonier Ministries. (n.d.). Ekklesia: Called-out ones. Ligonier Blog.
(n.d.). Ekklesia of Christ. Koinonia House Blog.
(2025). What does Ekklesia mean and why it matters for the church today. Berean Blog.
