Ecclesiology, Part 1 - Introduction

Messages that matter by Dr. Andrew Corbett

Every Christian should know about ecclesiology. Ecclesiology, from the two Greek words ecclesia and logos is the study of the church. The reason every Christian should be increasingly aware of ecclesiology is quite simple. When someone becomes a follower of Christ because of the miracle of conversion, they are “baptised into the body of Christ” as Paul told the Corinthians: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (First Corinthians 12:13) Therefore, what many new Christians may not know is that when the Spirit leads you to surrender your life of Christ, you are instantly spiritually “baptised” into the family of God! To put this in another way, a Christian is a follower of Christ and thereby a member of the household of God, which is the body of Christ, which is the Church. The risks of not being familiar with the biblical foundation for ecclesiology include being misled into thinking that a church is about entertainment and therefore its weekly gathering is merely about attending a performance, a show. Further risks include being told that the church is a corporation to be led by a CEO-type-leader whose primary concern is to the grow ‘the business’ by focusing on financial growth. Both of these two category of risks put vulnerable Christian at risk of being spiritually abused and deceived. But the benefits of developing a biblically sound ecclesiology includes: (i) The avoidance of fads, gimmicks, new trends, which do not comport with what the Scripture teaches. (ii) A local church is more likely to missiologically adaptive. Churches are subject to the Great Commission of Christ, but they also can adapt the compliance with that mission accordingly to their cultural context. (iii) Believers can develop the security that their church leaders are not whimsical and are subject to the revelation of God’s Word which has served the Church well since it founding. The foundation for biblically informed ecclesiology is found in Matthew 16 and in Paul’s Epistles.