“Welcome to Red Door Church,” is a phrase that I have said hundreds of times on a Sunday morning to open our worship services. But this Sunday those words hit me different. Due to a fire our church is not worshipping at it’s normal location; we are meeting at a building just down the street—the Royalton Academy Building—that is not a church. As I said those words again this past Sunday, I paused. “Welcome to…” Should I say, “Welcome to the Royalton Academy Building”? What should I say? It was one of those moments that often comes upon a Pastor mid-sentence, when he realizes something of import as he’s speaking. I continued on with “…Red Door Church.”
This blog post is to explain why I said it that way. Why say, “Welcome to Red Door Church,” when we are not in fact at the building with red doors?
The Meaning of the Word
The main reason is because the Bible uses the word “church” to refer to a group of people that have been called and saved by God. This is the literal meaning of the Greek word ekklesia (“called out ones”), which Jesus uses in Matthew 16:18 when He says, “I will build my church.” However, in Acts 19, the word is used multiple times of a general public assembly (see verses 32, 29, and 41). Most scholars argue that a better translation of ekklesia would probably be something like “assembly.”
Like the words kirk (Scotland) and kirche (Germany), experts say that our English word “church” actually comes from the Greek word kuriake, which means “belonging to the Lord.” These words often referred to a temple or building that had been dedicated to God. When the early church began translating the Bible from Greek into Latin, because there was no exact equivalent for ekklesia, the early church writers used many different terms. Tertullian’s used curia (“court”) while Augustine often referred to the Church as the Civitas Dei (“City of God”). Jerome in his famous Latin translation, the Vulgate, used derivatives of kuriakon, which became the standard Bible of the Roman Church for centuries. Given that background, it makes sense how the word “church” came to refer to a place that belongs to God.
Certainly most assemblies of Christian believers that have buildings think of the place they worship as a place that is special and set apart for God. Given that fact, there are actually good reasons to use the word “church” when referring to the place where a Christian assembly meets!
Images for the Church
However, what the vast majority of us mean when we say “church,” is certainly more than a building. And that too, makes good sense. Biblically, the church is a people. The Westminster Confession defines the church this way: “The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be, gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.”[1] Another definition that has been offered is: “The church consists of those whom the Lord has called out of the world into union and fellowship with Christ and into communion with each other.”[2] Grudem offers this simple definition of the church: the community of all true believers for all time.[3]
The Bible of course does not give us a textbook definition, because the Bible is not a textbook. Instead, the Scriptures use many images (or metaphors) for the church. These images describe what the church is like. Just a sampling of those images include: a family (1 Timothy 5:1-2), with God as our heavenly Father (Eph. 3:14), which makes all Christians brothers and sisters with each other (Matt. 12:49-50; 1 John 3:14-18). The church is also called the bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:32). The church is likened to branches on a vine (John 15:5), an olive tree (Rom. 11:17-24), a building (1 Cor. 3:9), a harvest (Matt. 13:1-30; John 4:35), and even to the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27).[4]
The Nature of the Church
If we are to think of the church correctly we must keep in mind a series of what Kevin DeYoung calls “both/and distinctions about the church.” The church is both militant and triumphant, visible and invisible, catholic and local, organism and organization, gathered and scattered. Many errors and problems with the church are a result of “celebrating one half of each pair at the expense of the other side.”[5]. (I will discuss these different both/and distinctions more in another post.)
Suffice it to say for now that these distinctions can help us think through our use of the word “church.” When I invite someone to come to church, what am I inviting them to? A few weeks ago, when we were meeting in the building our church owns, the distinction didn’t matter. “Please come to church this Sunday.” Was I referring to the building or the assembly, it didn’t matter becuase both were at the same place. Now, when we are meeting down the street in another building, that has not been dedicated to God, the distinction is a big deal. A few times I have actually had to clarify what I meant. “Our church fellowship is meeting at the Academy Building this Sunday, would you like to come.” While it’s a bit of a nuisance to have to clarify what I mean, this circumstances caused by the fire have forced me (and probably others) to think a bit more about what we mean we say “church,” and that’s a good thing.
[1] WCF 25.1
[2] Derek Thomas, “What is the Church?”, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/what-is-the-church, accessed 3/23/2026.
[3] Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020), 1047.
[4] Grudem’s Systematic Theology, 1052.
[5] Kevin DeYoung, Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 278-279.
