Ecclesiology

The Doctrine of the Church — A Position Paper

Bruce Mitchell

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A Brief Statement

I hold that the church is the people of God in Christ — the ekklesia, the “called-out” assembly gathered by His grace out of the world and into His own. She is at once a great mystery, hidden in God through past ages and revealed only in the New Testament; a living organism, the body and bride of her Lord; and a visible community, both universal and local. Born at Pentecost and distinct from Israel, she is the company of all true believers, indwelt by the Spirit and joined to Christ her head.

Marked by the faithful preaching of the Word, the right administration of the ordinances, and the loving exercise of discipline, the church is led under Christ by elders and deacons, gathered for worship, and sent into the world on mission. In this present age, she is God’s chosen instrument for the gathering and building of His people — and she will be so until the Bridegroom returns for her.

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A Detailed Exposition

What the Church Is: Ekklesia

The word the New Testament uses for the church is ekklesia (ἐκκλησία), which appears some 114 times. It is a plain word, not a sacred one: a compound of ek, “out of,” and kaleō, “to call,” and in ordinary Greek it named any summoned assembly — even the riotous town meeting at Ephesus is an ekklesia (Acts 19:32, 39).¹ Scripture lays hold of this common word and fills it: the church is the assembly God has called out of the world to Himself. The Greek Old Testament had already used it to render qahal, the “congregation” of Israel gathered before the LORD, so that the term carries an echo of the covenant people without simply equating the two.² The one word does double duty, naming both the universal church — all the redeemed of this age, in heaven and on earth — and the local church, the visible congregation gathered in a given place. Neither sense may be lost: there is one body, and it meets on the corner.

The Church as Mystery

For all its Old Testament foreshadowing, the church in its proper sense was not revealed to the prophets. Paul calls it a mystery — a truth hidden in God through former ages and made known only now, through Christ and His apostles: that Jew and Gentile should be fellow heirs and members of one body (Ephesians 3:1–6; Colossians 1:26).³ I hold, with the dispensational tradition, that the church is therefore distinct from Israel and did not exist in the Old Testament; she was born at Pentecost, when the Spirit baptized believers into one body (Acts 2; 1 Corinthians 12:13), and she belongs to this present age between Christ’s first and second comings.⁴ This is no incidental point. To confuse the church with Israel, or to read her back into the age of promise, is to blur the very thing the New Testament presents as newly revealed.

One Body, Many Members

The church’s deepest unity is organic, not organizational. Paul’s favorite picture is the body: “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5). As a body coordinates many unlike parts in one life, so the Spirit joins many unlike believers — differing in gift, background, and station — into a single living whole, and gives to each a gift for the good of all (1 Corinthians 12).⁵ Diversity here is not a problem to be overcome but a design to be honored; uniformity was never the goal. What binds the members is not sameness but the one Spirit and the one Lord whose body they are.

The Marks of a True Church

How is a true church to be recognized? The Reformation answered with marks, and I take them to be sound: a true church is found where the Word of God is faithfully preached, where the ordinances are administered as Christ appointed, and where discipline is exercised in love for the purity and protection of the flock (cf. the Belgic Confession, article 29).⁶ These are not the church’s machinery but her vital signs. Where the gospel is truly preached, Christ gathers a people; where it is lost, no amount of structure or success can make a church of what remains.

The Church and Her Lord

Scripture heaps up images for the church, and each guards a different truth. She is the body of which Christ is the head — He directing, she depending, the two so joined that she is called “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23; Colossians 1:18).⁷ She is His bride, loved, cleansed, and one day to be presented to Him without spot (Ephesians 5:25–32; Revelation 19:7; 21:2); she is a temple being built of living stones, a household, a flock under the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 2:5; 5:2–4).⁸ The older writers loved also to call her mother — the nurse of new believers in the faith — a tender image, provided it never rivals or obscures the one Lord to whom the church belongs. Taken together, these figures say what no single one can: the church is a Spirit-filled, Christ-centered family, not a human society that happens to be religious.

Church Government

Christ alone is head of the church; no man and no office may claim His place. Under Him, Scripture entrusts the church’s order to human leaders, and the history of the church has produced four broad patterns of government: the episcopal, in which authority descends through bishops; the presbyterian, in which it is shared among elders in graded assemblies; the congregational, in which it rests with the gathered congregation under its elders; and the independent or non-formal pattern of those who prefer a simple, Spirit-led fellowship. Each appeals to Scripture, and each captures something of it.⁹ I am persuaded that the New Testament fixes the offices and the qualifications more clearly than it prescribes a single detailed blueprint of polity, and that godly churches have differed here without ceasing to be churches. On this, I hold my convictions with charity toward brothers who order their assemblies otherwise.

Elders and Deacons

The New Testament knows two ordinary offices. The first goes by three names that describe one work: elder (presbyteros), marking maturity; overseer or bishop (episkopos), marking responsibility; and pastor or shepherd (poimēn), marking care. That these are one office and not three is plain where Paul summons the “elders” of Ephesus and tells them the Spirit has made them “overseers” to “shepherd” the flock (Acts 20:17, 28; cf. Titus 1:5, 7; 1 Peter 5:1–2).¹⁰ The second office is that of the deacon (diakonos, “servant”), devoted to the church’s practical care, after the pattern of the seven appointed to serve tables in Acts 6.¹¹ For both, the qualifications Paul lists are overwhelmingly matters of character, not gifting or pedigree (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1). They do not require perfection, but they do require proven, consistent Christ-likeness — for a flock is only as safe as the maturity of those who lead it.

Men and Women in the Church

Scripture honors the ministry of women at every turn, and so must we. Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah served as prophetesses in Israel; Phoebe is commended as a servant (diakonos) of her church; Priscilla labored beside Paul and helped instruct Apollos; and at Pentecost, Joel’s promise was fulfilled that God would pour out His Spirit on sons and daughters alike (Romans 16:1–2; Acts 2:17–18; 18:26).¹² No account of the church that overlooks these women is faithful to the text. I am not against women serving — far from it; God calls whom He calls, and the church has never stood a day without the gifts and labors of its women. On the question of the church’s highest teaching-and-governing office, however, I hold that the lead pastorate is not the place to which a woman is called. I take this from Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 2:12, with its appeal to the order of creation — yet I hold it as a matter of wisdom and ordained order rather than as an absolute, and I know that sincere believers who honor the same Scriptures read the passage otherwise. It is a conviction, not a test of fellowship.¹³

The Ordinances: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

Our Lord left His church two ordinances — visible signs of invisible grace, given to be observed until He comes. Baptism (from baptizō, “to immerse”) marks a believer’s union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4) and is administered “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). It is the new believer’s first public step of obedience, the outward confession of an inward reality. The church has long debated its proper subjects and mode — whether believers only or also their infants, whether by immersion, pouring, or sprinkling — and these differences are real; for my part, I take the New Testament pattern to bind baptism to personal faith.¹⁴ The Lord’s Supper our Master gave on the night He was betrayed, taking the bread and the cup as standing symbols of His body and blood (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). It looks three ways at once: backward in remembrance of His sacrifice, upward in present communion (koinōnia) with Him and His people, and forward in hope, “until He comes.” How Christ is present at His table has divided Christians; that He meets and blesses His people there, all may gladly own.¹⁵

Worship, Mission, and Service

The gathered church has from the first devoted herself to four things: “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). New-covenant worship is no longer the elaborate ritual of the temple but a feast upon the Word — read and preached, sung, prayed, and made visible in the ordinances — by which the whole body is built up (Colossians 3:16).¹⁶ From worship, the church is sent. Her marching orders are the Great Commission: to “make disciples of all the nations,” baptizing and teaching them to obey all that Christ commanded, on the warrant of His universal authority (Matthew 28:18–20).¹⁷ That commission is not evangelism only but discipleship — the lifelong conforming of believers to the image of Christ in what they believe, how they live, and what they love (Romans 8:29).¹⁸ And the same gospel that saves souls has always overflowed into mercy: down the centuries, the church has founded hospitals, sheltered orphans, taught the ignorant, and tended the dying, bearing witness in deed as well as word. We owe a duty to God for our neighbors as well as for ourselves, and the church’s mission is rightly both proclaimed and demonstrated — for His glory and for the good of a watching world.¹⁹

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Practical Implications

Ministry Emphasis: The Local Church and Its Mission

First, ecclesiology rebukes our individualism. Christ did not redeem a crowd of unconnected souls but a body; to be joined to Him is to be joined to His people. The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone, and the believer who neglects the gathered church neglects a chief means of his own growth and a chief field of his own service.

Second, it dignifies the local church. It is easy to love the church in the abstract and despise the congregation down the street, with its ordinary preaching and imperfect people. But it is precisely there — in a particular flock, under particular shepherds, around the Word and the table — that the universal body becomes visible. Membership in such a church is not an optional extra but the normal shape of obedience.

Third, it sets a high bar for leadership and a glad call to service. Those who would lead are summoned to proven character, not mere talent; and every member, gifted by the Spirit, has a part to play in building up the whole. There are no idle limbs in a healthy body.

Finally, it gives the church her bearings until her Lord returns. She is God’s chosen instrument in this age — not the kingdom in its fullness, but its herald and foretaste — charged to worship, to make disciples, and to show mercy as His ambassador. She labors in hope, knowing that the work is His, and that the Bridegroom will come for a bride made ready.

Not a society we built but a body He formed — called out, indwelt, and sent, until the Bridegroom comes.

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Biblical, Exegetical, Theological, and Historical Notes

1. Ekklesia (ἐκκλησία) joins ek (“out of”) and kaleō (“to call”): a body of people called out and assembled. In secular Greek, it denotes the citizen assembly of a city, and the New Testament uses it in just that plain sense of the Ephesian mob (Acts 19:32, 39). It occurs about 114 times. The etymology is suggestive rather than decisive — meaning is fixed by usage, which centers on the assembled people of God.
2. The Septuagint regularly renders the Hebrew qahal (קהל), the “assembly” or “congregation” of Israel gathered before the LORD, by ekklesia. The New Testament thus inherits a word already weighty with covenant meaning. Yet continuity of vocabulary is not identity of referent: as I argue elsewhere, the New Testament church is to be distinguished from Israel, even though both are rightly called the assembled people of God.
3. Paul calls the church a mystērion (μυστήριον) — not something permanently mysterious, but a truth once hidden and now disclosed. The content of this mystery is that the Gentiles are “fellow heirs and fellow members of the body” with believing Jews (Ephesians 3:3–6; Colossians 1:26–27). What was kept secret “for ages and generations” has been revealed through Christ and the apostles.
4. On the dispensational understanding, the church is distinct from Israel and did not exist in the Old Testament. She began at Pentecost, when believers were first baptized by the Spirit “into one body” (Acts 2; 1 Corinthians 12:13), and she belongs to the present age. This is treated more fully in my paper on Dispensationalism; here it is enough to say that the church’s newness is precisely the point the New Testament presses.
5. The body is Paul’s controlling metaphor for the church’s unity-in-diversity (Romans 12:4–5; 1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Ephesians 4:15–16). The members differ in gift and function but share one life by the one Spirit, who distributes gifts “as He wills” for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7, 11).
6. The Reformers named the marks (notae) by which a true church may be known. The Belgic Confession (1561), article 29, lists the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline. Most who stand in the believers-church tradition prefer the term ordinances to sacraments, to guard against the notion that the signs themselves convey grace; the substance of the marks is widely shared.
7. The head-body image (Ephesians 1:22–23; 4:15–16; Colossians 1:18; 2:19) teaches both Christ’s authority over the church and her living dependence on Him; “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” expresses how completely the church is bound up with her Lord. Kephalē (κεφαλή), “head,” carries the senses of both source and rule.
8. Scripture’s images for the church are many: the bride awaiting her husband (Ephesians 5:25–32; Revelation 19:7; 21:2), the temple of living stones (1 Peter 2:5; Ephesians 2:19–22), the household of God (1 Timothy 3:15), and the flock under the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:2–4; John 10). The patristic and Reformed image of the church as “mother” — famously in Cyprian and Calvin — expresses her nurturing role and is wholesome, so long as it never displaces Christ, to whom alone the church belongs.
9. The four historic polities — episcopal, presbyterian, congregational, and independent (or “non-governmental”) — each marshal biblical arguments. I judge that Scripture defines the offices of elder and deacon and their qualifications more precisely than it lays down one exclusive system of government, leaving room for ordered diversity. This is a matter on which faithful churches differ in good conscience.
10. One office bears three titles: presbyteros (πρεσβύτερος), “elder”; episkopos (ἐπίσκοπος), “overseer” or “bishop”; and poimēn (ποιμήν), “shepherd” or “pastor.” Acts 20 uses all three: Paul calls for the elders, says the Spirit made them overseers, and charges them to shepherd the flock (Acts 20:17, 28; cf. Titus 1:5, 7; 1 Peter 5:1–2). The titles describe maturity, responsibility, and care — three aspects of one ministry.
11. The office of deacon (diakonos, διάκονος, “servant”) is devoted to the practical needs of the body, freeing the elders for prayer and the ministry of the word — the pattern set when the seven were appointed in Acts 6:1–6. Its qualifications, like the elders’, are chiefly of character (1 Timothy 3:8–13).
12. Scripture records women in significant ministry throughout: Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah as prophetesses (Exodus 15:20; Judges 4–5; 2 Kings 22:14); Phoebe commended as a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae (Romans 16:1–2); Priscilla helping to instruct Apollos alongside her husband (Acts 18:26); and the daughters who prophesy in fulfillment of Joel (Acts 2:17–18). Any faithful ecclesiology must reckon honestly with this honored record.
13. The relevant passages — chiefly 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 — are read in two main ways among evangelicals who equally affirm the authority of Scripture. The complementarian view takes 1 Timothy 2:12, grounded by Paul in the created order (vv. 13–14), to reserve the church’s highest teaching-and-governing office to qualified men, while affirming the wide ministry of women in other respects; the egalitarian view reads the prohibition as occasional and locally addressed, finding no abiding restriction. My own conviction is that the lead pastorate should ordinarily be held by a man, on the ground of 1 Timothy 2:12 and the created order to which Paul appeals — yet I hold this as a principle of wisdom and order, not as an inflexible absolute, and emphatically not as any bar to the rich and varied service of women in the body, for God calls whom He calls.
14. Baptizō (βαπτίζω) means “to dip, to immerse.” Baptism signifies the believer’s union with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4; Colossians 2:12) and is commanded in the triune name (Matthew 28:19). Christians divide over its proper subjects (believers only, or also the infant children of believers) and its mode (immersion, pouring, sprinkling). I take the New Testament pattern — repentance and faith, then baptism (Acts 2:38, 41) — to bind the sign to personal faith, while recognizing the long and serious case made on the other side.
15. Instituted on the night of His betrayal (1 Corinthians 11:23–26; Luke 22:19–20), the Lord’s Supper is at once a remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, a present koinōnia (κοινωνία, “communion,” 1 Corinthians 10:16) with Him and His people, and a proclamation of His death “until He comes.” The churches have long differed over the manner of Christ’s presence — from a bare memorial, to a spiritual feeding by faith, to bodily presence — yet agree that He blesses His people at His table.
16. Acts 2:42 sets the pattern of the church’s gathered life: “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.” New-covenant worship centers on the Word — read, preached, sung (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19), prayed, and made visible in the ordinances — for the building up of the body (1 Corinthians 14:26).
17. The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) grounds the church’s mission in Christ’s universal authority and defines it as making disciples of all nations — by going, baptizing, and teaching obedience. It is not fulfilled by conversions alone but by the formation of obedient followers.
18. Discipleship may be framed as the whole person conformed to Christ: orthodoxy (right belief), orthopraxy (right practice), and orthopathy (right affection). The goal is Christlikeness in mind, life, and love — “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29).
19. The church’s mercy ministry has a long history — hospitals, orphanages, schools, and care for the poor and dying arose in great measure from Christian conviction. On the church’s relation to the wider society, H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture remains the classic map of the options; his typology is more useful than his own (mainline) conclusions and is to be read with discernment. The believer owes a duty to God for his neighbor’s community as well as for the neighbor himself.

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Select Bibliography

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Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

The Belgic Confession (1561).

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Book IV. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology. Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press.

Clowney, Edmund P. The Church. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Cyprian of Carthage. On the Unity of the Church.

Dever, Mark. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. Wheaton: Crossway.

Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper & Row.

Ryrie, Charles C. Basic Theology. Wheaton: Victor Books.

Saucy, Robert L. The Church in God’s Program. Chicago: Moody.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 25.