The Thirty-Nine Articles: A Faith for Today: Articles 19 - 22: What Is the Church?

The church is not a building but a people. The Articles are clear on this basic biblical truth but spell it out in more detail. To understand this we need to think about three distinctions: visible and invisible, local and denominational, organization and organism.

The Visible Church of God
Article 19 describes ‘the visible church of Christ’. If there is a visible church, is there also an invisible one? The Bible teaches that there is. All who belong to Christ, wherever they are in time or space, are part of the one true church of which he is the head. Within that invisible church there is no unbelief or defiance of Christ’s rule. But this true church can only be seen by Christ himself, until we see it in its glory at the end of the age. Until then we dream of and long for the perfect church but we live in a sinful world where the church can only be seen in its visible forms with its many problems.

The same Article describes the visible church as ‘a congregation of faithful people’. That implies that each local fellowship is the church, rather than just part of a diocesan or national or wider body. This too is clear Bible teaching. Each gathering of believers, meeting to hear the Word of God and be built up in Christ, is the church (not a small part of the church, not a church but the church). Local churches usually belong to wider groupings such as denominations or national churches and those wider groups can be described as churches (as the Article speaks of the church of Rome). Those groups can have advantages over local fellowships or parishes, in respect of size, influence, money or power - if those are advantages and not distractions. But when we are talking about the visible church we must remember that its focus is at the local level. To read more, click here.