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1. The Body of Christ in the Church 
The church struggles to find its place in a new age. It casts around looking for a working model to enable it not just to survive but to grow gracefully. Rather than tinkering with the mechanics of the institutional church, we might better look at the Early Church model of the Body of Christ. She is relevant for Christians today.
This Mystical Reality
This mystical reality transforms small groups, institutions and denominations toward the great vision of the universal, global and heavenly Body of Christ. It quietly energizes today's leadership, clergy, lay leaders and ordinary Christian men and women. In the Mystical Body, we rediscover a vision of a church that is no longer encumbered with buildings. She is set free to be God's hands and feet in the world. She is the Mystical Body of Christ.
David Watson wrote, "Two thousand years ago, it was the person of Christ that was compellingly attractive, not the individual disciples with all their individual blemishes. Today, it is the Body of Christ, when deeply united in love, and not individual Christians, that can most of all make one hungry for God"(1).
What is the Body of Christ?
You probably have many questions concerning the Body of Christ. What is it and what does it do? Is "the Body" the same as the congregation we attend on Sunday, or is there more? What does Christ's Body have to do with the man named Jesus who lived in A.D.30? What does the Body of Christ have to do with the Christian today? What is the Body of Christ anyway?
Is the Church the Body of Christ?
Our mistake today is to imagine that our church is necessarily the same as the New Testament Church. "The Body of Christ" meant "church" to the early Christian community. Paul writes, "for the sake of his (Christ's) body, which is the church"(2). For the first three centuries after Christ, there were no church buildings as we know them today, only the intimate family groups nourishing the faith. "Church," as we now describe it, is several times removed from the original model of the Body of Christ.
A Called Apart People
"Church" is a group of people who are "called apart" to worship the Lord. The New Testament Greek word for "church" is "ecclesia." it translates an older Hebrew word "kahal" meaning "assembly." "Ecclesia" has two parts, "ek" meaning "out of" and "klesis" meaning "a calling." These combine to make "church" an assembly "called apart to the Lord."
In New Testament writings,
"church" is invariably a small local worshipping group of Christians rather than a building. The Body of Christ is the ideal ministry model.
She was for the New Testament church and is also God's choice at the close of the Twentieth Century. This model, when rediscovered, will provide what we now call "our church" with a clear and focused vision for the future. We shall see what we can be.
A Female Body
Though this comes as a shock to many people, God has chosen the human female form to describe this ideal faith community called the Body of Christ. The New Testament sometimes calls her "the bride of Christ" and Paul considered her as feminine. He wrote, "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word"(3).
Though the Bible generally describes the Body of Christ as female, this does not limit her in any way at all. The Body of Christ, like God, is not a human entity and may exhibit male, female and other even non-human characteristics. The Body of Christ bears masculine features because her head is none other than Christ himself. Christ's Body in the sacramental elements at the table, the bread and wine, are neither masculine nor feminine but of vegetable origin. The Body of Christ exists in many different forms. We shall see her as a microscopic fertilized egg or as a gigantic heavenly chorus. She is a most complex and well-kept secret!
Questions for Discussion
1. Describe the Body of Christ in your own words.
Notes
(1) David Watson. (2) Colossians 1.24. (3) Ephesians 5.25.
"We are living members of his mystical body"
