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Sometimes the term "Church" is used to refer to a collective Christian body such as the [[Catholic Church]] or the total body of believers.
Sometimes the term "Church" is used to refer to a collective Christian body such as the [[Catholic Church]] or the total body of believers.
The word "Church" arises in Christian use from a number of New |Testament sources, perhaps the prime, the words of Jesus - "On this rock I will build by Church". This is at once concrete and it is general with portents of the future. It is concrete as Church, the "Ekkelsia" those that are "called out" (of the environs) for the purpose of gathering together is a direct reference to the synagogue - "Beit Knesset" in Hebrew, those that are "gathered together", visible, concrete, societal, a people. These then, together are the Israel of God, a new creation, upon which will sit, guide, judge, the 12 apostles, waiting for the Lord to return.
And yet, Church, is something beyond this, something that takes it in but transcends this as Church is somehow related to the Body of the Risen Christ which He now in Heaven fills and lives in here on earth. We the Church have now somehow by His grace become part of His Body, or we ,all together, are His Body on earth, through which He lives and continues His good and continuing work of the Kingdom of God.
Our nexus to His Body are the following ; it is faith in Him our Savior that has brought us to the Body and joined us. It is baptism which has brought us firmly into the life of the Spirit of the Body and Community and signifying that it is to Him that we belong. It is the communion with Him granted us at the table of the Lord in "Communion" that strengthens us for our life here on earth. It is the illumination and actual grace to help that comes to us in the hearing of His Word of Holy Scripture. It is in obeying that Word which we have heard that these weak and mortal bodies on earth receive Heaven's transforming power and new life - even as we live on earth awaiting His return, and it is in forgiving love, one member of the Body to another, that we actually experience the sweetness of Jesus living with us in His Body on earth, the Church.
The Church is thus concrete and specific, the people of God among many peoples, and transcending this, it is general, universal, attached to a greater reality - the Risen Christ Himself.
==The possibly first Church Structure==
==The possibly first Church Structure==