When Archbishop Peter Jensen invited a former Moore College student – by then a megachurch pastor in the United States – to speak at College, the guest kept putting slide after slide of his vast, brand-new neo-gothic auditorium-cum-cathedral on the screen.
Each time he proudly called it “our sanctuary.”
Trying to build a cultural bridge, Jensen said in his gentle, avuncular way:
“You might want to explain to the Australians here what you mean by sanctuary.”
From the back of the theatre, without missing a beat, the late John “Chappo” Chapman – diocesan evangelist and College preaching lecturer – called out in that unmistakable Aussie drawl:
“It’s just a rain shelter!”
The room roared. The visitor winced. And a very Sydney Anglican lesson landed:
Whatever you call the building, that’s not the church.
It’s just the shed where the real action happens – the word of God preached to the people of God, assembled to encourage one another to love and good deeds.
1. Learning ekklēsia before Hammond
Long before I ever read T. C. Hammond, I’d already been catechised in the ekklēsia lane.
My rector had been a D. B. Knox student, and he passed the allergy to “church = building” on to us. Week by week, Neil Flower would stand up the front and welcome us to:
“the weekly rehearsal for the great heavenly gathering.”
It was good theology. It was also, at times, pastorally awkward. More than one person quietly thought,
“If this is what heaven’s like, I’m not sure I want to go there.”
But the point landed. The New Testament word is ἐκκλησία – ekklesia – assembly, gathering.
Church = people gathered by the gospel, not bricks gathered by a builder.
That was the air I was breathing in local church life even before I got to Moore.
2. Hammond’s lane – kyrios → kyriakos → “church”
It was only in fourth year at College, working on my honours project on T. C. Hammond’s influence on Sydney Anglican evangelicalism, that I met the other lane properly.
Sitting in the Rare Books room at Moore, I had the privilege of reading the first edition of In Understanding Be Men. I also owned a copy of the third edition, the big-run teaching text for Doctrine 1.
What struck me in those early editions was Hammond’s move:
kyrios – “Lord” → kyriakos – “of the Lord” → “church”.
He linked our English church to the Greek adjective κυριακός – kyriakos – “the Lord’s”, and back to κύριος – kyrios, the Lord.
In other words:
- kyrios – the Lord
- kyriakos – what belongs to the Lord
- church – the Lord’s… people
He wasn’t defending church-as-building. His instinct was still people, even if the etymology was a bit wobbly.
Later editions (Wright’s revision) tighten the ecclesiology to match Knox–Robinson: ekklesia, not kyriakos, is the primary category.
3. Knox & Robinson – ekklesia means “gathering”. Full stop.
Knox and Robinson didn’t contradict Hammond’s pastoral aim. They simply put the New Testament word back in control.
The apostles write to churches (ekklesiai) in Corinth, Thessalonica, etc.
The word just means:
gathering, assembly.
You can have:
- an ekklesia of skater kids,
- an ekklesia of train crew in the sign-on room,
- an ekklesia of God’s people under a rain shelter with the Scriptures open.
Hence all the Romance-language descendants:
- Latin: ecclesia
- Spanish: iglesia
- Italian: chiesa
- French: église
- Portuguese: igreja
All from ekklesia → ecclesia.
So “church” is people gathered by God’s word.
The building is not the church.
4. Why I keep saying “rain shelter”
Back to Chappo.
Throughout this blog I’m keeping the lanes clear:
- “church” = people (ekklesia)
- “rain shelter” = the building
Sometimes that becomes the Blacket Rain Shelter at Kurrajong – a joke with a backbone.
Underneath the humour is the theological seam:
- Church = the Lord’s gathered people.
- Rain shelter = the roof that keeps them dry.
When I say a church was wounded, healed, split, or renewed, I mean people, not architecture.
And whenever someone calls a building a sanctuary, I still hear Chappo thundering ecclesiology in five words that matter: “It’s just a rain shelter.”