The Church is not a building

[MoonlitYT]

I’ve always heard this from our protestant friends. They say that the church is not a building, thus saying, calling buildings as “church” is wrong since this is not biblical.

How can i defend the importance of buildings? Need help.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

This must apply to only a subgroup of sola scriptura Protestants, since there are dozens of Protestant sects that have no problem referring to their worship building as a “church”.

 

[otjm]

How can i defend the importance of buildings? Need help.

Why do yuou need to defend the importance of buildings?

What will happen if you don’t do so?

What will happen if you just look at these people and say “Oh.”

Cell phones are not biblical either, but I bet they use one.

 

[Peebo]

I think some denominations consecrate their buildings, Jesus Christ is present in the Tabernacle of Catholic churches so I think it’s more than just a building, I don’t know if I’m correct in my thinking but I consider the “building” a Holy place because of that very reason that Jesus Christ is truly present therein. I believe that some Anglican and Lutheran churches also have tabernacles so I assume they would consider their church more than just a building.

 

[Cor_ad_Cor]

One of the hindsight things I’ve come to learn about my upbringing as a Protestant is that many of the Evangelical/Fundamentalist groups see things in a very black and white way — it’s either this OR that.

One of the beauties of our Catholic faith is seeing things through a BOTH/AND lens. The Church is the people, as they’re claiming, but it’s also the building, and also the institutional Church. It can be all of those things without one being a detriment to the other.

In a practical sense, I always asked them what they called the building they go to on Sunday mornings. In reality, they do call the building “church”…they’re just looking for something to nitpick because they don’t believe in the Real Presence.

 

[Beryllos]

With covid-19 etc., a Protestant church in my town has used such a statement, “The Church never was about a building,” to encourage their members to participate in their online Sunday services and modified in-person services.

If that’s all it is, why argue? We can agree.

 

[OddBird]

How can i defend the importance of buildings?

If they’re my kind of Protestants (Reformed tradition), that’s not going to be easy.

I have heard several French ministers in official position say that the building has nothing special in itself, and that it was no less and no more a sacred place than the local woods or your living room.

That’s understandable, because Protestant church buildings do not have anything sacred – nothing consecrated or dedicated or blessed, no tabernacle.

I recall a time, as a young adult, when I was charged to give a tour of our (Reformed) church to a class of kids from the local Catholic school, along with a minister who later became president of the French Reformed Church. Under the (horrified) eyes of the children, he comfortably sat on the altar and said : “See? nothing sacred here. That’s just a table.”

I don’t see why it would be wrong to call a building a “church”, though.

Anyway, I thought the word “church” in English derived from “kyriakos” rather than from “ekklesia” (from which the French word “église” originated), so I don’t see why it would be more biblical to call the body of believers a church than to call a building a church, since that word, to my knowledge, is never used to designate either in the New Testament

 

[Genesis315]

It’s not. The Church is a society with visible delineation.

But there’s nothing wrong with setting aside a building for sacred use–it is a good thing in fact–and nothing wrong with using the word “church” for it.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

How can i defend the importance of buildings?

I don’t think the issue here is defending “the importance of buildings”. If these Protestants are sola scriptura, then it’s pretty obvious that there is a big building called the Temple present through all of the NT and much of the OT, and that building was intended as a sacred place for God to be present and for the Chosen People to worship. It was so important that God was not happy when some of the Jewish people decided to go worship someplace else, like on a mountain, instead. Therefore, Scripture says that at least that one building was super-important.

The issue here is whether the building for worship can be called a “church”. If someone is bound and determined to go strictly sola scriptura, then there isn’t much defense for calling a building a “church” because that term isn’t used in scripture to designate buildings or spaces used for worship. Better to just let it go. Although you could point out that the Catholic Church uses the word “Church” capitalized to designate the body of believers, not a physical building, so you can agree with them that “Church” in the sense of “The Church” or “The Catholic Church” does not mean a building.

 

[Bithynian]

I don’t see why it would be wrong to call a building a “church”, though.

From my understanding, some evangelicals believe it inappropriate to apply the term ‘church’ to a physical space for worship as they believe it conflates the ‘spiritual ekklesia’, the body of Christ, for the building that the ekklesia happens to gather in. I can’t think of a mainstream Australian evangelical community that espouses this, but Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to their worship spaces as ‘Kingdom Halls’.

Now, as you mentioned, the profound irony is that the English word used to translate ekklesia does not actually derive from the Greek ἐκκλησία (unlike most European languages). It’s derived from the adjective κυριακόν ‘of the Lord’, the full expression being τὸ κυριρκὸν δῶμα to kyriakon doma ‘the Lord’s house’, which was one of many Greek terms for physical church spaces.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

How can i defend the importance of buildings?

Buildings? Their importance should be apparent enough don’t you think?

Do you mean the importance of a gathering place? Enclosed worshiping space? Or a sacred space, like the consecrated ground that a Catholic Church sits on?

 

[BartholomewB]

They say that the church is not a building, thus saying, calling buildings as “church” is wrong since this is not biblical.

You can reply — if you have the time and patience for that sort of thing — that their command of the English language is sadly less than perfect. Explain what a dictionary is and recommend a reliable one, such as Merriam Webster. Tell them that if they look under the letter C, they will find an entry for the word “church,” where all their doubts and quibbles will be satisfactorily cleared up. If they then go on to claim that the dictionary is wrong, their next step will be to take their complaint to the publisher. The whole silly business will no longer be your concern.

 

[Dlee]

The Church is not a building - it is the community of believers in the Body of Christ. We call our places of worship churches, synagogues, temples, church homes, etc. All about big C and little c.