My father, a retired minister, is on a campaign to correct what he perceives to be a misuse of the word congregation.

It is very common for people to refer to a "local congregation" (as in the folk that come together to worship in a particular house of worship).

My father's contention is that this is redundant, that a congregation is, by definition, local, and that one should, therefore, never use the words "local" and "congregation" together in that way.

An example that came up recently was in the job description for an opening at the district level of our denomination (a position serving several congregations in a geographic area).

The job description called for the successful candidate to "participate in the life of the local congregations". My father had the committee strike the word "local" from that sentence.

My contention is that while internally, a congregation is local (in the sense that those people currently congregating together are clearly "local" to each other, a congregation as a unit, or a body, has no implication of locality. There are congregations in Nebraska, congregations in Montana, congregations in Hawaii, or even England. If I want someone to serve congregations, (as in the description above), I want them to serve the local congregations, not the ones in other districts.

I think that the phrase "local congregations" was correct in this case.

Can anyone offer any clarification on the use of "congregation" or "local congregation"?

Thanks,
Andy Cook
Omaha, NE, USA

I'm with you on this, for two reasons. One is the one you so ably point out. The other is that there's nothing wrong with a little redundancy. There are two kinds of modification in English. The differences between intersective modification and appositive modification are nicely illustrated in this Language Log post by Arnold Zwicky.

There also needs to be a way to talk about the non-local "congregation" of the modern megachurch.

People have been attending churches via TV for many years (e.g. Robert Schuller's Hour of Power started in 1970) - some people who have never been within a thousand miles of the building consider themselves members of those churches.

I know of people who regularly drive from San Diego to Orange County (1 1/4 hour drive each way on a good day) to attend Saddleback Church pastored by Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life). It has 7 different venues with different music styles but a live video feed of the lesson from the "main" site.

What Faldage said. Whilst 'local congregation' may (perhaps) be tautologous, 'local congregations' isn't necessarily. And even applied to one congregation, it may be a matter of emphasis, not redundancy - highlighting the local gathering as opposed to the wider 'church' (i.e. Parish with more than one congregation or denomination).

In some ways it's just a matter of usage over time and in context. The main question to ask is whether the meaning is clear in a particular usage.

There are overlapping grammatical and theological/cultural/definitional factors operating here. Different denominations define the word 'congregation' slightly differently. The word 'church' itself means lots of different things depending on beliefs and context. It comes from German/Scots/OE for a place of worship, a building, even though it now usually also doubles as a translation of the word ecclesia, meaning the congregation or gathering - that is, the people, not the place they meet. Some denominations mean the denomination when they say 'Church' and the local ecclesia when they say 'congregation.' Nearly everybody uses 'church' also to refer to the building the ecclesia or local congregation meets in. It can be confusing, but to say 'local congregations' in the context mentioned here doesn't seem to me to be incorrect in terms of either the grammatical meaning it conveys, or of the theological belief of your father that the 'congregation' is always a local gathering.

..and with this post I am now officially 'addicted' to the Wordsmith forums!

Not to mention online 'e-churches' that have appeared more recently.

I would contend that at least grammatically (and possibly theologically, though that is not something we can discuss here) the idea of a 'non-local gathering' or a non-locational gathering, a virtual gathering, is pushing the boundaries a bit. It may be a meeting of the minds, but does the verb to congregate and its various cognomens imply a more actual and bodily presence of the congregants? I think it probably does.

at least grammatically

I offer a nit to pick. The collocation local congregation is perfectly grammatical. It may suffer from some logical or semantic problem, but I think not. Having looked over a couple of dictionary entries, I can see nothing which specifies that a congregation must be local to the speaker. It's simply an assembled group of people. And how would one speak of distant congregations to which one did not belong?

Etymologically, the word is interesting in its derivation from the Latin grego, gregare, 'to assemble' from the noun grex, gregis, 'herd, flock', cognate (link) with English cram and Greek αγορα (agora). Interesting distinction in English in the positive versus negative connotations of herd and flock; cf. sect, cult, and religion.

Yes, I more correctly would have said "semantically" not "grammatically." In any case it was only the minor premise in the argument.


Not sure we mentioned speakers, local or otherwise. The locality refers to that of the gatherers and/or where they agree to gather. The word refers to the gathering of the group, but regardless of where they all came from to gather, they have to meet at a particular locale. However, it can also be used of the group at times when they are not gathered to mean something like "all those who normally meet for this reason at this place" as in for example "I rang around the congregation to find out what they thought..."

Hi, Andy, and welcome. I agree with you and the others, and will add that aside from what's already been stated, I can tell you that as a United Methodist, I know that this terminology has been in use--agreed-upon, understood use--for at least decades; and there is something to be said for that. I know you didn't state the denomination; and if it's something other than Methodist, then perhaps the use of this term isn't long-standing.

You make me laugh, mr. Zmjezhd. You offer a nit to pick like it's a precious delicacy.

mr. Zmjezhd

Please, Mr. zmjezhd was my father, and if you're going to capitalize my name it's zmejZhD.

Ha, I still always copy you name from the sideline as I can't keep the sequence straight in my head. Just zm , when I'm too lazy to copy.