Our English word “church” is derived from the Greek word “kuriakos,” meaning “belonging to the Lord” or “pertaining to the Lord. It is used in the expression, “the Lord’s supper” in 1 Corinthians 11:20. It is the supper belonging to the Lord. While “kuriakos” can be translated “church,” “ekklesia” should not be translated “church.” Granted, the church is His, the Greek word, “ekklesia” is not properly translated, “church.” It defines a class of people who have been called out of one thing and (by implication) brought into another. Again, this does not describe local churches as they are not the “called out.”
By the time William Tyndale translated the Greek text into English, he translated the word ekklesia with the English, “congregation,” which suggests to us a local church. Tyndale completed the translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament before he was martyred. John Rogers, an assistant and friend of Tyndale, completed the translation of the Old Testament using some work from Coverdale and published the first entire Tyndale Bible under the pen name “Thomas Matthew.” This Bible, called the Matthew’s Bible (1537) used the term “congregation.” The next English Bible, the Great Bible (1539), also used the term “congregation.” However, in 1557 the Geneva New Testament, produced by William Whittingham, was the first English translation to translate “ekklesia” as “church.” To understand the reasoning for this change is critical. The institutional concept of the church equating the institution with its clergy was already very strong. The change to the new “congregation” conveyed to the people that a congregation of people is the church instead of the “official church/institution” with its established hierarchal order. Changing the translation to “congregation” angered the institutional Catholic church because it did not support their authority and control as priests over the common man and relegated the “holy” orders to be managed by others. This, they thought, would produce untold chaos and división. For them, they were the church belonging to the Lord and there was no other.
While the change to congregation sought to avoid one error, it still supported another error because it is assumed that for a group to be rightly called “the church”, the people must form a local congregation. That is, they must all congregate into one place and form an organization to which people can join and, through that membership, they can be rightly called “the church.” I agree that the Bible does not support the idea of a ruling universal church headed by popes, prophets, or any other governing body. It is not so much the kind of government that is questioned here, but whether a governing body should exist at all. Does the Bible support the idea that the “ekklesia” is a membership to a corporate organization requiring the faithful allegiance to it to remain in good standing with it and God? The “church” is the people of God who have been called out of the darkness and into his marvelous light.
The setting for Tyndale’s translation is couched in the abuse of “church” as a governmental institution of religious power and authority. The translation from “church” to “congregation” has the appearance of moving the leadership away from the Catholic priests to the congregations. The problem is that there is no support for the word ekklesia to refer to a local church organization any more than it was to think of it as a universal church organization. The reason, however, is not surprising as the institutional concept was firmly entrenched.
One effect of the Reformation and the shift to the word “congregation,” is that each “congregation” with its clergy had the power instead of the mother church in Rome having it. The word “congregation” was the alternative institution with its membership, treasury, and holy men (ordained priests or preachers) to which the people go to receive God’s grace. While teaching the theory that the church is a priesthood of believers, “going to church” still represented the one holy place to which individuals could go to separate themselves from the unholy and receive God’s truth from the spoken Word (by men qualified to do it, of course). Now, it is entrenched in many to think of a church as a local but still corporate organization consisting of identified members and part of a bigger whole, i.e., a particular denominational body.