Quotes About Ecclesia

We first must plant the gospel in the hearts and lives of people and then see what form of ecclesia emerges from the transformed community. If we begin with the premise that we are starting a "church," it will often come loaded with intuitional and cultural assumptions. Churches should grow out of the mission, not the other way around.

the church (the ecclesia), when true to its real calling, when it is on about what God is on about, is by far and away the most potent force for transformational change the world has ever seen.

They looked back to the Bible and to the apostolic era, as well as to early church fathers such as Augustine (354–430) for the mold by which they could shape the church and re-form it. The Reformers had a saying, "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda," meaning "the church reformed, always reforming.

A Building? There is not a single place in the New Testament where the term "church" refers to a building – not one! It wasn't until A.D. 190 that Clement of Alexandria referred to a meeting place as a "church." He was also the first person to use the phrase "go to church."34 Every single one of the appearances of the word ecclesia in the New Testament refers to a gathering or network of believers in Christ, not a physical structure or place.

We lost the knowledge of God," he went on to say, "at the moment when we transformed the Ecclesia from experience into theology, from a living reality into moralistic principles, good values, and high ideals. When that happened," Father Maximos said humorously, "we became like tin cans with nothing inside.

we see the reality of Jesus risen, his actual existence now as a person who is present among his people. We find him in his ecclesia, his sometimes motley but always glorious crew of called-out ones.