It is most likely Paul himself who privileges this name [ekklesia] for those Christian communities, which otherwise might have been much like other Hellenistic supper clubs and like-minded associations. And his privileging of this name had a reforming, pastoral intent. Paul’s extensive use of the word — sometimes in the plural for the various assemblies; sometimes in the singular for one local house gathering or several gatherings in a city; and sometimes in the singular for all the assemblies together as one great worldwide assembly of God — recalls a biblical image. Again, the word is the Greek translation for the Hebrew word qahal, the assembly of all Israel as convoked by God, specifically as it was constituted before God at Sinai and again at Jerusalem’s Water Gate in the return from exile and as it was to be finally constituted on the day of the Lord, drawing people of all the nations into this eschato­logical gathering. Each of these assemblies was imaged as an occa­sion for the word of God to be heard and for a shared meal to be held (see Exod 20:1 and 24:11; Neh 8:1—12; and Isa 2:2-3 and 25:6). For Paul, that image then encountered the existence of the supper clubs and the local associations and called those that were Christian to find the Spirit of God dwelling in their midst, to find the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ converting their usual conversations into a hearing of the word of God, their usual meals into eucharist proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes, and their usual mutual benevolence into care for God’s wretched poor. Their gatherings of the like-minded, thus, were to be turned into church, into the assembly of God, a local assembly in communion with the other assemblies. By God’s gift, every local assembly around the gospel of Jesus Christ and all the assemblies as a single reality were already the holy convocation of God around the word and the life-giving feast. The existence of this convocation among the Gentiles, including people of all nations, was already a fulfillment of the ancient promise. Ekklesia as a name for the gather­ing belongs thus to Paul’s eschatology and to Paul’s understanding of the way Scripture creates Christian identity.

from The Assembly: A Spirituality (2022), 21-22.