How “New” is the “New Testament Church” (Mt 16:13-19)

In response to Peter’s confession in Matthew 16, Yeshua tells His disciples that upon that confession He will “build” His “church”. As this is the first time the Greek word for “church” (“ekklesia”) appears in scripture, many in mainstream Christianity assume this is the first time Peter would have heard this word used in a religious context. For this reason, they believe Peter would have understood that Yeshua was talking about a completely new institution that was separate from the “Jewish” religious institutions of the time. But is this really what Matthew 16 teaches? In this message, we discuss the pitfalls of system bias and the scriptural language barrier and their effect on how we interpret this passage, and then flip to other passages that seem to indicate that Yeshua was not the first to use the Greek word “ekklesia” in a religious context. This causes us to ask whether “ekklesia” is not a new concept at all, or if it is instead simply the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for “congregation” used in the Old Testament. In addition, we discover several passages that seem to show Peter, James, and Paul all expected to find believers worshiping in synagogues on the Sabbath day! In the end, we are able to answer the question, “How ‘new’ really is the New Testament church?”