I appreciate or understand now what’s the “church” is as Erickson presented in his book Christian Theology. I have seen the development of the “church”, from its meaning, Biblical images and some special problems. It’s a long period of time to come up with good and different meaning of the “church” as I noted: the church are “belonging to the Lord”, “view as dynamic…”, “assembly of the Citizen of Polis”, “Congregation” and so on… I realized that until now the church existing. I was reminded of the verse says “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
I have seen also the Biblical image of the church. “The church is constituted of Gods people. They belong to Him and He belongs to them”, “The Image of the body of Christ emphasized the connection of the church, as a group of the believers with Christ” and “dwelling within the church, the Holy Spirit imparts his life to it. Those qualities which are his nature and which are spoken of as the fruit of the Spirit will be found in the church. The presence of such qualities in inductive of the activity of the Holy Spirit and in a sense, of the genuineness of the church.”
Nowadays, successful pastors and writers have their own ideas and meaning about church. They said that the “church is organism and at the same time organization”. Organism since the church is living and active while organization is focuses of its structure. We have church council and guidelines.
Rick Warren by in his book Purpose Driven Church
