What is the Church?

Happy Ash Wednesday, everybody. I'm sure that most people are going to be blogging about Ash Wednesday, so I'll write about something a little different.

I got hired to write a couple of sections of curriculum for Augsburg Fortress. It's a discipleship curriculum across the life span. My sections are within the senior high age range. It seems that most of the format is to have a bunch of quotations and then questions. In fact, each section heading is a question. I like questions, and I like asking questions that really don't have good answers, so this is perfect.

However, I'm having a challenge with some of my topics. My two sections are entitled "What does the word "church" mean in the first place?" and "Who's in charge of the Christian Church?".

They want the quotations to be from all over the place, historical, political, ecclestical, theological, popular culture, etc. It's been hard to find quotations that fit under these two questions. I've also had a hard time finding scripture to answer the first question, especially since they want everything related to the book of Matthew. There is more "church" language in there, but it never defines what the church is...even Acts doesn't really do it that well. I've gone into explaining ekklesia as a definition for church, but it sort of stops right there.

As you can see, I'm a little stuck. If any of you have any advice for me at all, I'd be happy. Quotes and relevant scripture passages are welcomed! I'll keep looking tonight, and maybe inspiration will hit.

Oh, did I mention I'm supposed to have this turned in by the 6th of March. Yup, that's Monday. I guess I know what I'll be spending this weekend doing.