I have spent a lot of time thinking about and doing research on the church. Recent events in the world and in my life have led to this blog post.

The big word for studying the church is ecclesiology. In plain English this means studying how we do church.

I have come to believe that we need to make a sharp distinction between the “Institutional Church” and the ἐκκλησίᾱ, ekklēsiā that Jesus established and that Paul worked so hard to implement. I very intentionally put the institutional church in quotes and with caps and, also, to give the Greek words from the Bible.

Fairly recently I had the opportunity to work for a year or so with a group of pastors. When I very tactfully voiced my thinking about the need for a sharp distinction as discussed above I was treated to (my perception) hostility. I think I understand why that happened.

I believe that this is an extremely important topic because it has a profoundly important effect on our relationship with God and with our fellow human beings.

NOTE: I have decided to keep my blog posts short for a number of reasons. My plan is to provide hyperlinks if a reader is interested in pursuing the topic further. In addition I plan to do followup posts defending and explaining the thinking. I plan to use Tags and Categories to organize the information.

The Rod Dreher blog post that triggered this post is “Policing the Christian Village”. My response to his post is “Comment – Rod Dreher: Policing the Christian Village”.