It’s a good question…the kind of question we should be asking.  But before responding to this question, I have
 another question for you: What image comes to mind when you hear the word church?” 

Most people are likely to think of “church” as an institution. The dictionary defines a social institution as a group of people who have come together for a common purpose. An institution is a place where life-giving human activities can be nurtured and protected and sustained. Some aspects of life should be unscheduled, spontaneous, or random, but not all of life should be. Some things are too wonderful to be left to chance, so we put those things on our schedule. Football season is an institution. Thanksgiving Day is an institution.  So is Christmas. School is an
institution. And so is the church.

In the Greek New Testament, the word translated “church” is ekklesia. The word literally means “an assembly,” or “a gathering” of people around an idea. The word ekklessia comes from “ek” meaning “out of” and “kaleo” which means “called out.” So, think of an ekklesia as an assembly of people called out around an idea. That’s how people originally thought of church. But over the years, something unfortunate happened. People began to think of church merely as an institution—a place that you went to for religious services.

Interestingly, our English word “church” comes not from the Greek word ekklesia but from the German word kirche, which meant “a sacred place where you gather for religious purposes.” That shift in thinking changed the
fundamental way people related to the church. For centuries now, church has been known as the place you attend or an event you sit through, rather than as a movement you are part of. And so, the church became an institution that essentially provided services for people and was controlled by powerful people who used it to serve their own
interests. 

It may seem that the institution known as the church should be torn down.  But that wouldn’t solve anything. 
Institutions are not a problem. But institutionalization is. An institution can enrich life, but institutionalization takes that good thing and turns it into death. How? The structure, the mechanism, the means, the bureaucracy becomes the end. The Pharisees were masterful at institutionalization. They turned the Sabbath, a weekly day off intended to renew the human spirit, into a life-draining burden.

Our church is an institution. So is every other church.  There’s no need to be embarrassed by that. We do not want to eliminate the institution of the church. But we do want to be aware of how easily institutionalization enters in and takes over.  Therefore, we want to keep our church on an upward trajectory of life-giving renewal.   That’s the kind of church we want to be—one that is continually growing into a
gospel-shaped church.