Do you know what a church is?
“Why, of course. It’s that building down the street where people go to worship God.”
Wrong.
“Wrong?”
The building is where the church meets. In biblical terms, the church is a group of people that God has made His own by the work of Christ on the cross.
“Tell me more.”
OK. The Greek word for “church” is ekklesia (from which we get the term ecclesiastical). It means “called out ones.”
“What is that all about?”
Well, it’s this way: In the city-states of Greece, there were three kinds of people: slaves, freedmen and citizens. Being a true democracy in which every citizen voted on each issue, when one arose, a herald went about calling out the citizens from the populace to come, vote, and thus transact the business of the city.
When God’s heralds go out preaching the Word, through their preaching He calls out people to transact God’s business!