"Ekklesiah" a language history lesson

[Tony] The name Ekklesiah has become both symbolic and personal here in our new home. We have dubbed our home with the name “Ekklesiah House,” which is a term based closely on the word “ecclesia.” If you were to look up the word “ecclesia” in a dictionary you would find two definitions which seem vastly different from one another. The first definition will probably be related to a division within the government of ancient Athens. The ecclesia, to Athenians, was “ the political assembly of citizens of an ancient Greek state.” The ecclesia was an organized gathering of Greek citizens who assembled in accordance with their respective states to discuss political issues, leadership, laws, etc. This was a political function and was essential to the statehood governmental system of the Greeks. Ecclesia was also a term that applied to Roman politics before, during and after Jesus’ life. In his book Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne spells the word “ekklesia,” and illustrates its influence in Roman political systems: “Ekklesia: A local public assembly within the greater Roman Empire, much like a town meeting. These assemblies bestowed citizenship, discussed local political concerns, assigned ’elders’, and offered prayer and worship to Caesar. There was no separation of religion and secular political business.”
The word “ecclesia” also carries with it another connotation that seems unrelated to the first, however, compared in a social context, their relationship is not only important, but as Jesus has shown us, dangerous to the survival of the other. The second definition of “ecclesia” is “a church, either as a building or a body.” This was a word that applied to another assembly of people who were followers and supporters of their own sets of laws, rules, traditions, values, and politics. This body of people was the church. In the earliest period of the church, followers of Jesus showed that their ecclesia was just as political as the ecclesia of the Roman government (check out the Book of Acts if you want a few examples). This definition of ecclesia clashed dramatically with the first. One definition represents the power, authority and culture of the Roman government. The other definition represents followers of an ultimate authority and a set of rules and culture that follow the will of God instead of aligning with the will of the Roman government and its leaders. Claiborne defines this body of followers as follows: “Ekklesia: word used for the early church. ’Emphasizes that the followers of Jesus were called to participate in their world as local communities of an alternative society to the Roman imperial order.’ Bestowed alternative citizenship and assigned elders. Though it discussed its own political and religious concerns, it was understood as separate from, and in contrast to, the state and the other ekklesiai, their politics, and their religion.”
The key words of the second definition are words like: “alternative,” “its own,” “local communities,” “separate from,” “in contrast to.” Given these two definitions and knowing that both operated and were used within the same language at the same time in history implies the drastic social contradiction that was at hand. Here, in our own home, in our own time, we believe that this social contradiction is still very alive. We believe that we have a choice of which authority we subscribe our allegiance to. We believe that their Rome is our America. We also believe that our lives, our actions, our beliefs, our values, and our desires resemble which kingdom our allegiance lies. We have slightly altered the word again, in order to personalize it, to make it our own, and in turn, to be able to more closely relate to its meaning. “Ekklesiah” has become a symbol of our function here in Dayton’s Bluff. “Ekklesiah” is a place in which and through which followers of Jesus embody the values, politics, culture, and society of God. In comparison to the culture we have become a part of, we hope that our devotion to divine authority offers others an “alternative” to what they know without God. We hope to separate ourselves from the idols of our culture- from our pursuit of money, power, pride, self indulgence, and so many other common goals which our dominant culture has taught us to pursue. We pray that we will be a contrast to the desires of our culture here. We pray that we will be light in times of darkness, that we will be a voice in and for the silent, we will be a community in an economy of self-fulfillment, our love will be paralyzing in the ears of hate as it manifests, we will replace guns with shared meals, replace greed with jubilee, and replace our idols with worship of God. “Ekklesiah” is the embodiment of an alternative, separate, and intrinsically different way of life that is devoted to allowing the spirit of God to work through us by dying internally to our desires to subscribe to the ways of the Rome we need to separate from. When separated, Ekklesiah will spread like mustard seed through a garden, or like yeast through bread. I leave you with a visual example of what we pray we will be in our new home and community.
--- take a cup and fill it with water. The water inside the cup is made up of a collection of hydrogen and oxygen atoms (two hydrogen atoms to every one oxygen to be exact!). These atoms together make water molecules that become the water inside the cup. Without contamination, the water is clear as every molecule becomes part of what collectively becomes the water you see. If you take a drop of that water out of the cup, what is left inside is that same as before, just less of it. However, if you replace that drop of water with a drop of food coloring, a single drop will transform the appearance and structure of the entire cup of water. It is still water inside the cup, yet the water looks different and is different from its original state. Now, if you take a society of people who live their lives according to a general set of cultural values, then you have a society that will look like whatever those values are. Like the hydrogen and oxygen, if the values of your culture are money and power, then together a culture is formed that resembles those values. But, if you put one drop of something else into that culture, something that is fundamentally different, something that looks different, lives different, and submits to an entirely different set of values, you will change the appearance of the entire culture, like the food coloring did to the water.

We hope to be that food coloring here.