But is that really an option? Well, no it’s not. Let me explain. There’s a lot of confusion today as to what the “church” is. Often people will say the church is a body to which every believer belongs. That is true. The body metaphor was one of the Apostle Paul’s favorite pictures of the church: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27, see also Romans 12:4-5). But the church isn’t simply some undefined or invisible body. Rather, according to the Bible, it has a visible and outward organization. It has rules (1 Timothy 2:8-15, 1 Corinthians 11-14, and Titus 2), it has leadership (Matthew 16:19, Acts 6:1-7, 14:23, Ephesians 4:11, Hebrews 13:17), it has recognized preachers (Romans 10:15, 1 Timothy 5:17), it has a defined membership (Acts 2:41, Romans 16:3-16), it needs to compensate its teachers (1 Timothy 5:18), and it has discipline for those who need correction (Matthew 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 5:1-12). None of that would be possible if the church was only an invisible body and not also an organization.
