What makes a church a church?
What is necessary to have a church? Might a group of people who claim to be Christians become so unlike what a church should be that they should no longer be called a church? In the early centuries of the Christian church , there was little controversy about what was a true church. There was only one world-wide church, the “visible” church throughout the world, and that was, of course, the true church. This church had bishops and local clergymen and church buildings which everyone could see. Any heretics who were found to be in serious doctrinal error were simply excluded from the church. But at the Reformation a crucial question came up: how can we recognize a true church? Is the Roman Catholic Church a true church or not? In order to answer that question people had to decide what were the “marks” of a true church, the distinguishing characteristics that lead us to recognize it as a true church. Scripture certainly speaks of false churches. Paul says of the pagan temples in Corint