Qāhēl: A Company of Peoples
“God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.” (Genesis 28:3)
The story of the universe is a story centered around God setting apart a holy and life-giving company of peoples for himself, qāhēl in Hebrew.
Qāhēl is a group of humans, organized as a singular body, committed to one another and to the purpose by which they are bound together.
It’s a word that can be used to describe an assembled unit going into battle or a restored community returning from exile.
There’s a shared-ness and mutual identity and narrative among those in this collective.
The term qāhēl is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word ekklēsia, which is traditionally understood as the foundational word we use for “church,” which is - more than anything - the Bride of Yeshua and the family of God.
It’s vital that we the church understand this as our identity so that we can also understand what we the church are not.
Qāhēl is not a day of the week, a building with crosses and steeples, or even an event or worship service. It’s not a brand, business, 501(c)3, program, activity, or (arguably) a place of employment.
When we use language like this, it can very easily morph a word meant to describe familial community into an objectification of God’s people. Perhaps it’s my own opinion, but our terminology here is so culturally entrenched that it seems to represent an identity crisis among us who make up the western church.
Take, as an analogy, my wife coming home from work. What if, as she walked across the parking lot to her car, she sent me a text message saying, “I’ll be at Merrill soon” or “I’m coming to Merrill”? Not only would it be grammatically erroneous, but it would depersonalize her disposition towards herself and me.
In the same way that my wife being a Merrill isn’t contingent upon work and non-work hours, what she’s doing in a given moment, or her being at our house (or us even having a house), how much more ought we effort ourselves to amend our semantics around being the church to honor our identity as Adonai’s qāhēl?
My challenge for each of us this week is to try and catch ourselves every time we say phrases like:
“What church do you go to?”
“I’m going to church.”
“I was at church yesterday.”
“Church was great this morning.”
“I just drove by a church on the corner.”
Consider alternatives, such as:
“I’m a part of the church.”
“I worshipped and prayed with my church family this morning.”
“Our church community gets together for Shabbat dinner at our house on Fridays.”
“We just walked by our church’s building.”
“Our church doesn’t have a building but gathers in each other’s homes.”
