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Note: The following is adapted from a paper I wrote as part of my education through the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a biblical understanding of Paul’s definition of a local church, including how a gathering of believers becomes a local church." The title of ‘church’ is not a concept taken lightly by Paul, or for that matter by his student Luke in his description of church establishment in Acts. There are, in fact, only three ways in which either author ever uses the term we translate as ‘church’ to describe a body of believers as an institutional reality: conceptually, as the universal church, and as established local churches. Each of these three tell us something about the Pauline definition for the church, but for our purposes in this article the most attention will be paid to the third. 
There are few instances of this usage, but it bears mention because of how it impacts our understanding of Paul’s view of local churches. Some key examples come from 1 Timothy, in which Paul uses some form of ἐκκλησία three times1, two of which are relevant here. These are 3:5 and 5:16, in which Paul is describing the behavior of individuals and how that behavior impacts a church, rather than highlighting a specific existing church. This is, after all, what a conceptual usage of ‘church’ means: that the author is using the term ‘church’ in reference to a theoretical church body that is being used as an example, rather than discussing an actual church that exists at the time of the writing. In the case of 1 Timothy, the theoretical church could best be described as the church that Timothy was actively establishing in Ephesus, a future restored state of the church in Ephesus which was, at that time, dealing with some significant theological and practical issues. But the point here is that, although the believers in Ephesus had already gone through the establishment process, they were now entertaining false theology and practices that necessitated a Pauline delegate to put them back on track and establish the proper order Paul had entrusted to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. In its present state, Paul never describes the body in Ephesus as a church in his letters to Timothy2; but this will be explored more later. Paul is using the term for a condition in which the church is operating well, but he isn’t using it for the body at that time. He has a goal in mind for Ephesus to reach, and it is the body having achieved that place that he refers to as a church. This indicates some awareness that a local body must be at a certain level of maturity, or at least have certain traits in place, in order to be properly called a church; but it is an incomplete argument if left to stand on this point alone.
The uses of ἐκκλησία in Ephesians, on the other hand, are exclusively about the church as a non-local body. He is describing the church as the general body of Christ in the world, and then applying that image to his expectations for the local church in Ephesus. In 1:22 and 5:23 the church is the body over which Christ is the head; in 3:10, 3:21, 5:24, and 5:32 the church is the display of Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world; and in 5:25, 5:27, and 5:29 the church is the body for which Christ gives of Himself. These uses do not show Paul directly defining the local church, but they do show him applying the expectations of the universal church to the local church. From these uses, then, we learn that Paul expected the local church to follow Christ as its head, display Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world, and to operate with the knowledge that Christ has purchased it with His blood. These are broad ideas, but the application of them defines the parameters for Paul’s expectation of local churches. A local church is not part of the universal church, and therefore not a church at all, if it doesn’t apply these broad principles to its structure and life.
As noted above concerning 1 Timothy, Paul avoids calling the church in Ephesus a church in the letter. He continues that trend throughout his letters; he tells Titus to “appoint elders in every city” in Titus 1:5 (NASB) rather than in every church, he never refers to the church in Rome as a church in their epistle but does refer to two other established churches (and, in Romans 16:23, probably the universal church) as such. As noted above, he never uses the term ‘church’ to describe the local church to which he is writing in Ephesians. But he does refer to other churches, such as those at Corinth, Colossae, Philippi, and Thessalonika, as churches within their epistles. Likewise, in Luke’s descriptions in Acts, a church is only ever called a church after it has been established. The closest thing to an exception in Acts is 14:23, when Luke suddenly switches from calling the bodies in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch (Pisidia) as ‘disciples’ to ‘churches’ in the same sentence in which he states that Paul had appointed elders there. This is the crux, then. Paul would leave cities prematurely for a small assortment of reasons, but he never leaves a church when he does so. He gathers disciples early, but only after ensuring they have the word and mission in hand and have elders over them does he call them a church. That is, there is a clear point at which a group of gathered believers transitions from being a collection of disciples to being a church, and that point always has certain traits in place. This runs the danger of being an argument from silence, however, so let’s shift gears and look at it from a different angle. This is, after all, the general idea Schaeffer is driving toward in “Form and Freedom in the Church” as presented in our reading. Schaeffer lists eight norms that must define a local church in order to be a church, and while he seems to argue for norms that are unnecessary within his list, the foundation of the list is solid: that there are criteria Paul used to determine the churchness of a body, if you will, and that we should be using the same criteria in our understanding of the church today. The points that Schaeffer hits on well cannot be adequately discussed without separating them from those he does not, so allow a brief aside for that division to be drawn. Schaeffer’s eight norms are that a church is made up of Christians, that they meet together in a special way on the first day of the week, that there are elders responsible for leading the church, that there are deacons responsible for the material aspects of the church, that the church takes discipline seriously, that there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons, that there is “a place for form on a wider basis than the local church,3” and that baptism and the Lord’s supper are practiced. We can see the validity of each of these by comparing them to the text and to the broad principles laid out in the discussion of the Universal Church above. That the church is composed of Christians is at best alluded to in scripture, and indeed Schaeffer himself does not point to any specific passage as making that point, but it is a clear requirement in light of the understanding that the church operates with Christ as the head and that the church is the body for which Christ died; that is, in order for the local church to meet those criteria inherited from the universal church, the members of the local church must be Christians. There is no such logical connection, however, between the universal church criteria and Schaeffer’s statement that the church must meet in a special way on the first day of the week, and even the two passages he presents as supporting this claim do not actually speak to that claim at all; therefore this criteria will not be treated as valid here. Three of his criteria can be composed into one assertion without losing any of its power of assessment. That the church has elders, that the church has deacons, and that there are specific requirements for those offices are all essentially pointing to one claim: that the church is only a church if it has leadership in place in accordance with the Bible’s definitions for elders and deacons. This leads directly to the claim that the church must take discipline seriously, as Paul urges churches multiple times in his epistles and which must be in place for the leadership so established to have any real authority in the operations of the church. What remains are the sacraments, which are generally assumed to be happening by Paul (although he occasionally sees need to clarify how they are to be happening) but draw directly from the giving of Christ for the body and the display of the glory of Christ, without even exploring the fact that Christ commanded them and they therefore point to His headship and authority; and the place for form beyond the local church. This one, we must be careful about. Applied in a way that says churches must be in network would rule out the church in Jerusalem as a true church until other churches were founded, but ignored entirely would rule out the discussion of the universal church as a means of assessment entirely. The Bible does not handle the issue in either manner, so neither should we. Therefore it will stay, but will not be discussed except to say that, for our purposes here, it has been sufficiently addressed in the section on the universal church. The points that remain, then, are that the church is a collection of Christians that administers the sacraments as handed down by Christ under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with the power to discipline members. By what criteria do the leaders discipline members? By the advancement of the gospel, the headship of Christ, the display of the glory of Christ, and to the standard of a body for which Christ gave Himself to establish a spotless bride. And indeed, Paul never describes a church as a church unless he knows for certain that it meets this definition. Ephesus was called a church when it did so, but was not called a church when it was no longer displaying the glory of Christ and had adopted teachings that showed them to be outside of the headship of Christ. Galatians and Romans, two epistles written to ensure the church had the basic teachings of Christianity down to bodies that may not have had elders in place to guide and discipline based on those teachings, do not refer to those bodies as churches. Titus was sent to cities, and not to churches, to appoint elders. In every instance in which Paul or Luke describe a body as a church, it is an established church; that is, it is a church that meets the definition from the previous paragraph. In every place where Paul worked, he worked toward the aim of bringing a group of disciples to the place where they met that definition, even returning to hostile territory to ensure he didn’t leave the disciples with an incomplete job. Even when a great opportunity to establish a new church came his way, he turned aside from that opportunity to focus on finishing the work of establishment elsewhere. Paul sends Titus to finish work he could not finish himself, out of a desire to see that the work was fully and properly finished. Paul never considered his work complete in a place until a church was established by the criteria thus far described; and neither should we. If this is the goal Paul had in establishing churches, if the definition of a completed work was a body that could be rightly called a church because it was composed of Christians practicing the sacraments under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with power to discipline the body under the headship of Christ and for His glory, then we cannot bandy the word around for anything less. This is Paul’s definition of an established local church, and it must also be ours. 1A fourth use of ‘church’ is added in some modern translations, in 3:7, which could also be argued as a conceptual usage. I will not participate in that argument at this time, however, since Paul didn’t use or avoid the term in that phrase and therefore it does not help us much with Paul’s intended use of the term.
2Or, indeed, in his letter to the Ephesians themselves. 3Page 66
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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