Our Name

                          WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

     The term Ekklesia is not found in most vocabularies.  It has a strange sound to our American ears.  That's because the word Ekklesia (Ek-klay-see'-ah) is the Greek word for "Church".  Properly translated it means: 'the assembly of those that are called out'.  (For more detailed information including proper pronunciation, click here.)  Unfortunately, in today’s society, the term "church" has come to mean a building or a place where you “go” to worship or be social with "good people".  We chose the term "Ekklesia" to remind us that the church is not a place... it's a living breathing assembly of Christ-following individuals.   An Ekklesia then is a gathering of people with a shared belief or a common identity.  In New Testament times the early believers used this word to refer to their gatherings.  Later, Ekklesia would be used to describe all the believers of a particular area, i.e., the Ekklesia of Ephesus, Corinth, or Rome.  Ekklesia has also been used to describe the global community of Christians — the Ekklesia Universal.  No matter how the term is used it NEVER refers to the building because the "CHURCH" is the people not the facility.

---