Church as God’s People

CRITICAL: in the contemporary post-Christian West, ‘church’ increasingly carries negative or purely institutional connotations given declining attendance, high-profile clergy-abuse scandals, and a large and growing religiously-unaffiliated population; ‘going to church’ is often understood as a passive cultural habit rather than active participation in Christ’s body. This doctrine’s living, relational, Spirit-filled sense must be actively restored, not assumed retained by the English word alone.