One perspective for viewing God’s cosmic plan is to see it as the calling and preparation of a people. Adam and Eve were to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” becoming a people (Gen. 1:28). God’s promise to Abraham was, “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen. 12:2)—and he did. God chose the children of Israel, redeeming them from Egypt, saying, “I will take you for my people, and I will be your God” (Exod. 6:7; cf. Deut. 7:6). This theme echoes consistently through the Old Testament.
Moving into the New Testament, we learn that the People of God finds its center and basis in Jesus Christ. The unfaithfulness of God’s people in the Old Testament did not thwart his plan. God is still calling out and preparing his people—not the biological Israel, but the new and true Israel, the Church. John the Baptist came “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” his ministry “to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:17).
Paul was deeply conscious of God’s plan to prepare a people on the basis of faith. Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14; cf. Rom. 9:25, 26, 2 Cor. 6:16). The same fact is cited by James (Acts 15:14), John (Rev. 21:3), and the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 8:10). Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.… Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9, 10). This is the “new covenant” of which Jeremiah spoke, in which God says, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33).
In a previous article (“The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 6, 1970), I described the Church as the fellowship, or community, of the Holy Spirit, and indicated the relevance of this concept for church structure, showing the necessity of some type of small-group structure. The purpose of the present essay is to view the Church not only as a fellowship, a koinonia, but also as a people, a laos. This too is an essential biblical emphasis and has important implications for church structure. What does it mean, biblically, to be a people? And how should the Church be structured to experience this reality of peoplehood?
Biblical Basis
The idea of a people has rich biblical and especially Old Testament roots. Biblical Greek uses the word laos in referring to the Church as a people. This word (from which we get “laity”) occurs more than 2,000 times in the Septuagint, usually translating the Hebrew word ’am. Laos is the word commonly used for Israel as God’s people; “it serves to emphasize the special and privileged religious position of this people as the people of God” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Kittel and Friedrich, Eerdmans, 1964–9, IV, 32). In the Old Testament, laos “is the national society of Israel according to its religious basis and distinction” (ibid., p. 35).
In the New Testament, laos occurs some 140 times. It is the word both Paul and Peter use to describe the Church as a people, as the new Israel. Thus in the New Testament “a new and figurative Christian concept arises along with the old biological and historical view and crowds it out” (ibid., p. 54).
This forming of a people provides the basis for the Church’s mission of service and proclamation. As a people, the Church is itself the verification of the message it proclaims—or else the betrayal of that message. As Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder notes, “the work of God is the calling of a people, whether in the Old Covenant or the New.… That men are called together to a new social wholeness is itself the work of God which gives meaning to history, from which both personal conversion … and missionary instrumentalities are derived” (The Concept of the Believers’ Church, edited by James Leo Garrett, Jr., Herald, 1969, p. 258). Yoder continues,
Pragmatically it is self-evident that there can be no procedure of proclamation without a community, distinct from the rest of society, to do the proclaiming. Pragmatically it is just as clear that there can be no evangelistic call addressed to a person inviting him to enter into a new kind of fellowship and learning if there is not such a body of persons, again distinct from the totality of society, to whom he can come and with and from whom he can learn.… If it is not the case that there are in a given place men of various characters and origins who have been brought together in Jesus Christ, then there is not in that place the new humanity and in that place the gospel is not true. If, on the other hand, this miracle of new creation has occurred, then all the verbalizations and interpretations whereby this brotherhood communicates to the world around it are simply explications of the fact of its presence [p. 259].
The Church is constituted a people just as an individual is constituted a child of God: by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The converted individual becomes part of a transformed people. And the working out of this reality always produces a church with New Testament dynamic, unless stifled by unbiblical traditions.
Biblically, we can distinguish at least five characteristics of the People of God:
1. The Church is a chosen people. The emphasis here is on the fact of God’s sovereignty and initiative; it is God who moves to choose and redeem a people for himself. The Church is the result of God’s sovereignty and grace (2 Tim. 1:9). It exists because God has acted graciously in history.
The fact of God’s choosing a people for himself implies a distinction between those chosen and those not chosen. If God has chosen a people, then that people really exists as a people, a people in some sense identifiable and distinct from the world. It is not an anonymous people.
2. The Church is a pilgrim people. Here we have an emphasis that is difficult but biblically necessary. Difficult, because it can be misconstrued to mean theological and practical withdrawal from the world. But necessary, because without this emphasis the Church tends to slip into the worst kind of worldliness.
Adam and Eve were not created to be pilgrims. God made a home for them that should have been permanent. “The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). Adam and Eve were at home in the world and in harmony with their environment—morally, physically, and psychologically.
But when sin entered, man became a wanderer. Our first parents were expelled from the garden. After his act of murder Cain was condemned to be “a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Gen. 4:12). But what happened? “Cain went away from the presence of the LORD … and he built a city” (Gen. 4:16, 17). The world came under the dominion of evil, and man tried to build his substitute Eden in this tainted world.
So henceforth the story of redemption is the story of God’s calling out a people for himself. This people is called to be a pilgrim, to live in active tension with the world, “looking for a city not made with hands,” knowing that the time of final reconciliation, the end of the pilgrimage, will come.
The Church is a pilgrim people. This does not mean that it is completely divorced from, or has no responsibility for, its cultural context; the Church’s mission is still reconciliation. It does mean, however, a fundamental moral tension between the Church and human society. The pilgrim aspect results from the estrangement produced by sin and is a reminder of and testimony to the alienation between man and his world. And this is a precondition for true reconciliation.
3. The Church is a covenant people. The relation between God and his people is specific and is morally and ethically based. It is grounded in the covenant, and hence there exists the possibility of fidelity or infidelity to the covenant.
A major significance of the covenant is that it grounds God’s people in real history. The covenant implies a covenant occasion in which the contract between God and man was actually established in space and time. The Hebrews were deeply conscious of this. Thus we have the historical giving of the law in the Old Testament and the establishing of the New Covenant in the historical last supper, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The covenant is established in historical occurrences that can be recorded, commemorated, and renewed.
These historical occurrences have been recorded for us in the Scriptures; hence the Bible is the Church’s Book of the Covenant. The People of God is a people “under the Word.” The Bible is normative for the life of the Church, not because of some particular doctrine of inspiration, but precisely because it is the Book of the Covenant.
4. The Church is a witness people. Its task is to point to what has happened in the past and is happening in the present that is truly the action of God. Jess Moody reminds us that the Church must be able to say “This is that”—it must have something miraculous to point to. As he says, if our only success “is that which can be explained in terms of organization and management—that is, something the world could do with the same expenditure of effort and technique, [the world] will one day finally repudiate us” (A Drink at Joel’s Place, Word, 1967, pp. 22, 17).
The Church must witness to God’s personal acts throughout history—and, as the Book of Acts makes clear, supremely to the resurrection of Jesus Christ (e.g., Acts 2:32, 3:15, 4:33). It must also be able to point to contemporary miracles of personal conversion and genuine community that give credence to the miracles of an earlier day. As John Howard Yoder says,
The political novelty which God brings into the world is a community of those who serve instead of ruling, who suffer instead of inflicting suffering, whose fellowship crosses social lines instead of reinforcing them. This new Christian community … is not only a vehicle of the gospel or fruit of the gospel; it is the good news [The Concept of the Believer’s Church, edited by James Leo Garrett, Jr., Herald, 1969, p. 274; italics added].
But the witnessing role is not purely passive. God has given the Church a “ministry of reconciliation” that “through the church” God might bring about the reconciliation of “all things, … things in heaven and things on earth” (2 Cor. 5:18; Eph. 3:10, 1:10; Col. 1:20). This gives Christians a mandate for working in various ministries of reconciliation, performing those “good works which God prepared beforehand” for the fulfilling of his plan of reconciliation (Eph. 2:10).
5. Finally, the Church is a holy people. The biblical demand for holiness is insistent: “You shall be holy for I am holy” (e.g., Lev. 11:44, 45, 19:2, 20:7; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16). Says Paul, Christ sanctifies the Church that it may be “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27).
This holiness is a sharing of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). It is the fruit of the Spirit’s dwelling and acting, not only within the individual believer but also within the redeemed community. It is an aspect of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Human personality and the Christian community were made to be indwelt by the Spirit of God, and they reach their potential only when they are.
Implications For Church Structure
Theologically the Church is constituted the People of God, but in fact it often fails to demonstrate this reality in space and time. Whatever may be the more so-called spiritual reasons for this lack, it must also be seen as a problem of ecclesiology, and especially of church structure. What can the Church do to incarnate this reality, to make it visible? It seems to me that four implications are especially vital.
1. The individual believer must be able to feel himself a part of the larger corporate unity of the People of God. This means the Church must meet together in a way that encourages and expresses the fact of peoplehood. As with koinonia, so with laos: it is meaningless to talk of peoplehood as a reality if in fact our structures stifle the experiencing of the reality.
Here again we must be reminded of the spatial and temporal obstacles that we as believers face in this life—obstacles that keep us from automatically realizing our sense of peoplehood. There are mystics, of course, who enjoy an isolated existence and do feel, mystically, their union with other Christians. But their experience is far from the reality of most of us, and it is not the ideal. The average Christian needs church structures that lead to a sense of peoplehood.
2. But what kind of structures do build this sense of peoplehood? Obviously, structures that actually bring the People of God together at specific points in space and time. So we have a second guideline for church structure suggested: The Church must meet together regularly as a large congregation. It must actually come together as a people.
This is one reason—though not the only one—why small-group fellowships, essential as they are, are not in themselves sufficient to sustain the life of the Church, biblically understood. The individual cells of the Body of Christ must see and feel their unity with the larger body.
It is not physically possible, of course, to bring the entire Body of Christ together at one time and place. Physical limitations require “intermediate structures”—whether associations, denominations, “crusades,” or “movements”—that bring together a large cross section of the People of God.
The need for such large-group structures was brought home to me while in Brazil. In the city of São Paulo, the fiery Pentecostal evangelist Manoel de Mello is building what is billed as the largest church in the world. Thousands of his followers in the “Brasil Para Cristo” movement meet together each Saturday night. Packing into the public buses, perhaps singing as they come, they converge on their temple. From all parts of the city and outlying areas they come, ready to share the joy and excitement of a great throng of believers. They pray, sing, witness, and hear their leader. Tomorrow they will be scattered in hundreds of congregations around the city, many of which are small and struggling. But they will not be discouraged: they know they are a part of a people, a movement! Something is happening, something big, something God-sized. They have seen it and felt it.
Some may scoff, sniffing about “emotional release” and “crowd psychology.” Certainly there are the dangers of extremes and counterfeits. But we must recognize the dependence on structures that is a part of our humanity while we are bound by space and time. And one cannot deny the practical value of this identification with one’s church as a people.
Actually, most new religious movements have instinctively sensed, in the beginning, the need for some form of regular large group gatherings, whether mass rallies, evangelistic campaigns, “congresses,” or other forms. Often mass preaching services, such as in early Methodism, fulfilled this function.
A variety of forms is possible. What is essential is the gathering together of a large group of believers, and that on a regular and frequent basis—the periodic uniting of smaller congregations and cells into a great throng.
3. Further, taking our cue in part from the Old Testament, we must stress the need for covenant experiences. Both the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians were conscious of being a people because something had happened: God had acted in history to choose and form a people. In the Old Testament, these acts of God were periodically recalled by special festivals and celebrations. Such commemorations were covenant experiences, occasions for the remembrance and renewal of the covenant between God and man. And this suggests a third implication for church structure: TheChurch needs periodic festivals that have covenant significance.
MORNING HYMN
The morning sun burns through the haze
To call my heavy heart to praise
The mercy of my Saviour’s ways,
More faithful than the silent rays
Of each created dawn.
When sunlight streams along my way
Where pines drop jewels rainbow bright,
Shall I find gladness in this day
And doubt his love who gave me sight
And bid the darkness flee?
Shall light in darkness lift my heart
From God the Giver yet apart?
Great King of mercy, Lord of good,
Not in the shadows of this wood
Does light arise to me.
For all the dawns that yet may rise
To lift my eyes to trees and skies
Are born where Light in darkness died
And Christ our Life was crucified
Upon another tree.
My Father, fill this shadowed place
With that most sweet Shekinah fire,
The glory of my Saviour’s face—
My portion and my heart’s desire,
My green fir tree of grace!
EDMUND P. CLOWNEY
I am not talking here of superficial celebrations patterned after those of the world. Rather I mean occasions that spring from and celebrate the genuine joy and excitement of corporately sharing the fact that God has acted. This is what the Old Testament religious festivals were all about. The Church needs festivals analagous to the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles, not to the Tournament of Roses, New Year’s Eve, and the Super Bowl.
Interestingly enough, American Protestantism used to have such a festival, the camp meeting. In the best camp meetings, whether denominational or non-denominational, the sense of peoplehood and covenant responsibility was periodically recovered. Thousands flocked to such meetings during much of the nineteenth century.
But the camp meeting has gradually faded into the mists of American folk history or been replaced by the family camp, and no suitable substitute has yet appeared. Billy Graham crusades and the recent rallies of the Jesus movement have on occasion sparked some sense of peoplehood, but only sporadically, and therefore, ineffectively; their main purpose lies elsewhere.
Whatever the form of such covenant experiences, there are at least four functions they might fulfill:
a. Celebration of the acts of God. Reciting with joy and gratitude the acts of God in biblical history, in Jesus Christ (especially the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Pentecost), in the particular history of this particular part of God’s people.
b. Covenant renewal. Reciting the terms of God’s covenant with man, God’s part and man’s part. This would involve repentance, confession, and rededication to God and a renewed sense of fidelity to the Bible as the written Word and Book of the Covenant.
c. Evaluation and definition. Evaluation: Have we been faithful to the covenant? Where have we failed? What changes should be made? Have we betrayed the biblical perspective, either by pickling our faith in unbiblical traditions or by making changes that are equally unbiblical in their inspiration? And definition: What does it mean, today, to be the People of God? What is our relation to non-Christian society? What are the limits of our involvement with the world?
d. Renewal of a vision for the future. Where there is no vision, the people perish. We must think historically and biblically about the future. We must catch a vision of future possibilities, remembering we serve a God who yet promises to do a new thing. Covenant occasions are right for the continuing definition of a biblical eschatology.
4. All the foregoing brings us to a final implication of the concept of the People of God for church structure. As we have seen, the People of God does not exist for nothing or by accident. The basis of the Church’s existence as a people is all-important. Therefore, in the Church’s structuring of itself the basis of the Church’s existence as a people must be kept central.
What is this basis of the People of God? It is nothing other than the Word of God—God-in-relationship; the person of Jesus Christ as living and active; and the Bible as historically conditioned but once-for-all revealed truth (Heb. 4:12, 13). The Church is constituted a people by the Word of God.
Here, perhaps, is where large-group and small-group structures come together. The small group is an excellent context for Bible study and genuine theological work by the whole Body of Christ, rather than by “professional theologians.” Here the real biblical meaning of being a people of God in these days needs to be hammered out.
For some, it is an offense to speak of the Church as a distinct people. For those who wish to emphasize the solidarity of all mankind in the face of injustice and other social ills, any suggestion that the Church is or ought to be distinct is scandalous.
But the fact remains that the Bible speaks in these terms. Further, the Church as a distinct community is a practical necessity. Truth does not exist independently of structures of common life.
But how does one define who is, and who is not, a part of the People of God? What are the criteria for identification? Various solutions might be suggested, but this much is clear: The kind of structures suggested here, which heighten and define the Church’s sense of peoplehood, naturally tend to draw together genuine believers and repel those not sincerely interested in the things of the Spirit.
Where church structure is fundamental, where it allows and encourages the sense of being the People of God rather than quenching the Spirit, there we may hope for a new depth of Christian faithfulness and for new life in the Church.
George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”
