Reference

The Ekklesia Model

The Global.Church knowledge graph models churches and church-like bodies through three layered classes:

gc:Ekklesia — the category concept. Kinds of body: House Church, Church, Network, Denomination, Apostolic Band, Universal Church, and so on. Lives under dul:Concept + skos:Concept. A category does not act, gather, or carry believers.
gc:EkklesiaCommunity — the body. The persistent socially-constituted gathered community of believers — what's actually on the ground. Sibling of gc:PeopleGroupCommunity under the shared gc:Community taxonomy. The four classification axes (Form, Ecclesial Mode, Gathering Mode, Lifecycle), demographic facts (gc:numberOfBelievers, gc:numberOfBaptizedBelievers, gc:numberOfLeaders), and lifecycle attestations all attach here.
gc:EkklesiaSegment — a scoped slice of a body's collective. The reusable A-box anchor for engagement attestations, scoped rollups, and per-scope assessments. One body realizes many segments simultaneously: a multi-country network has one across-countries segment plus one in-country segment per country it touches; a single local church realizes one local-body segment.

When the body acts — sending an apostolic band, commissioning a daughter church, issuing an attestation — the agentive variant gc:AgentiveEkklesia is used. It's a subclass of gc:EkklesiaCommunity plus dul:CollectiveAgent plus prov:Organization, so PROV-O activities can attach (prov:wasAssociatedWith, prov:wasAttributedTo) without typing the at-rest body itself as an agent.

Why split category from body

A category is a kind of thing; a body is the thing itself. House Church, Network, and Denomination name kinds of body — they have no name, no leaders, no Sunday service of their own. Asking "what is House Church's lifecycle stage?" is a category error in exactly the way asking "what is the Kurds' lifecycle stage?" would be on the people-group side. The four axes describe a body, classification (gc:EkklesiaClassification) places the body under one or more concepts, and engagement work attaches to scoped segments rather than to either the category or the whole body.

Four Orthogonal Axes (on the body)

Each axis answers a different question about a gc:EkklesiaCommunity. They compose at query time — there is no compound class for "online house church multiplying via missional order."

Axis	Property	Vocabulary	Question	Cardinality
Form	`gc:hasEkklesiaForm`	`gc:EkklesiaFormScheme` (5 concepts)	What kind of body is it?	Required, single
Ecclesial Mode	`gc:hasEcclesialMode`	`gc:EcclesialModeScheme` (2 concepts)	Modality (gathered) or Sodality (sent)?	Optional, multi
Gathering Mode	`gc:hasGatheringMode`	`gc:GatheringModeScheme` (3 concepts)	How does it convene?	Optional, multi
Lifecycle	`gc:hasEkklesiaLifecycle`	`gc:EkklesiaLifecycleScheme` (6 concepts)	Where is it in its life-arc?	Optional, single

The axes are independent. A single gc:EkklesiaCommunity can carry, for example, FormHouseChurch + ModeSodality + GatheringInPerson + LifecycleMultiplying — and a different one can carry FormLocalChurch + ModeModality + GatheringInPerson + GatheringOnline + LifecycleEstablished. Combinations are queries, not new classes.

Form

What kind of body is it? Structural identity, not activity.

Code	Concept	Description
`FRM-LOC`	Local Church	Single-congregation assembled body in one place. The default form; primary unit of counting in church-planting metrics.
`FRM-HSE`	House Church	Contextualized small-scale body meeting in homes, cafes, or informal spaces — itself the primary ekklesia, not a sub-structure of a Local Church. Covers DMM, organic church, simple church, life groups.
`FRM-REG`	Regional Church	An extra-local body functioning as one church across multiple localities (diocese, city-church, multi-site operating as one covenant community).
`FRM-APO`	Apostolic Band	A sent team functioning as ekklesia-in-motion — apostolic, mobile, pioneering. Opt-in — only mint when a record explicitly references the band as an ekklesia. Most mission-agency field teams will not be modeled as Apostolic Bands.
`FRM-ORD`	Missional Order	A rule-of-life community organized around a shared missional vocation. Distinguished from an Apostolic Band by persistence (outlives a single project) and from a Mission Agency by ecclesial character (worship, covenant bonds, shared community life — not just a 501(c)(3) office).

Movement is not a Form. The movement level (multi-generational reproduction across regions) is expressed via Lifecycle = Multiplying on the parent body, not as a separate Form concept.

Ecclesial Mode

Modality or Sodality — Ralph Winter's Two Structures framework. Multi-valued: a body may carry both modes at once.

Code	Concept	Description
`ECL-MOD`	Modality	The "gathered church" structure — geographically bounded, inclusive of all ages and stages, parish or congregational form. Open membership, stable location, mixed demographics.
`ECL-SOD`	Sodality	The "sent church" structure — mission-vocational, voluntary by affiliation, selective in membership, translocal in operation. Gathers around a shared apostolic call rather than around geography.

Apostolic Bands and Missional Orders are Sodality by definition. Local Churches are usually Modality and can also carry Sodality when they sustain an apostolic engine — for example, a settled congregation that has commissioned a band sent from within carries both Modality and Sodality triples on the same body. There is no synthetic "Hybrid" concept.

Gathering Mode

How the body convenes. Multi-valued. Distinct from gc:gatheringForm, which classifies an individual gathering (Sunday service, midweek prayer) — gc:hasGatheringMode is the body-level pattern across all of its gatherings.

Code	Concept	Description
`GTH-INP`	In Person	Physically co-located in a shared venue. The default mode for traditional congregations and house churches.
`GTH-ONL`	Online	A body that itself convenes through digital means — believers gathering with mutual participation in a shared digital space rather than a shared physical venue.
`GTH-DST`	Distributed	The body persists across multiple sub-gatherings (cell groups, house meetings, campuses, regional nodes) without single-venue dependency. The body's identity is sustained through networked gathering rather than a single weekly assembly.

A few things worth knowing about this axis:

GatheringOnline means gathering, not broadcast consumption. Watching a livestream alone is media reception, not gathering. The defining mark is mutual ecclesial participation — members are present to one another and recognize each other as part of the same gathering. Privacy-preserving and security-driven forms of presence are explicitly admitted: a persecution-context house church meeting on Signal with cameras off, voices modulated, pseudonymous handles, or text-only chat still carries GatheringOnline so long as members are participating with one another.
Distributed is distinct from Online. Distributed is about geographic/structural decentralization; Online is about medium. A persecution-context church network gathering in secret across a city is Distributed even if its members primarily meet in person when safe.
Multi-valued is the common case. Most post-2020 congregations carry GatheringInPerson + GatheringOnline (in-person service with a parallel digital congregation that gathers, not just streams). Persecution-context networks often carry GatheringInPerson + GatheringDistributed. There is no GatheringHybrid concept.

Lifecycle

Where the body is in its life-arc. Optional and single-valued: a Lifecycle stage is asserted only when there is a gc:EkklesiaAttestation chain for the body — typically because a pastor, denominational authority, or field steward has produced one. Absence under open-world semantics simply means no stage has been attested. The materialized property on the body is computed from the latest non-superseded attestation in the chain; the attestation's gc:attestationSubject points at the gc:EkklesiaCommunity.

The Lifecycle scheme is a per-body life-arc — it describes the trajectory of a single congregation, distinct from the Phases of Engagement Toolkit, which scopes its phases to people groups and geographic areas rather than to individual congregations.

Code	Concept	Description
`LCY-FRM`	Forming	Pre-declaration coalescence of a single body — leaders identifying, members being incorporated, rhythms of gathering and teaching taking shape, ecclesial functions emerging, but the body has not yet declared itself or been recognized as established.
`LCY-EST`	Established	A recognized assembled body with ongoing gatherings, identifiable leaders, and rhythms of worship, teaching, and community life.
`LCY-MUL`	Multiplying	An Established body that has generated one or more new bodies — through commissioning, direct church planting, or DMM reproduction. Verified by `gc:fulfillsCommitment` or `gc:wasSentFrom` links to daughter bodies.
`LCY-STL`	Stalled	A body whose lifecycle progression has plateaued — no lifecycle change across multiple periods, no evidence of reproduction. May still gather; stalling describes trajectory, not extinction.
`LCY-RCN`	Reconstituting	Post-disruption rebuilding state — a formerly Stalled or Dissolved body is re-forming as a recognizable body under the same identity.
`LCY-DIS`	Dissolved	The body no longer gathers as a recognizable body. Dated dissolution terminates the active lifecycle chain unless a Reconstituting stage is later recorded. The instance and its history are preserved — dashboards distinguish active bodies from dissolved ones.

Forming attestations do not require gc:hasEkklesiaForm on the attestation itself — at the Forming stage the structural shape of the body may not yet be determinate, and that's OK.

Classification: placing a body under one or more concepts

A gc:EkklesiaClassification is a time-indexed source-attributed claim that a particular gc:Ekklesia concept classifies a particular body or segment. The scheme is gc:EkklesiaCoreScheme by default — the GC-curated catalog of ten concepts (HouseChurch, Church, Megachurch, MultiSiteChurch, CellGroup, MovementCell, ApostolicBand, Network, Denomination, UniversalChurch). Other organizations can publish parallel schemes (a denominational catalog, an IMB ecclesial typology, a tradition-specific list) whose concepts cross-walk via skos:exactMatch / skos:closeMatch into this anchor.

The classification is its own first-class entity rather than a property on the body, which preserves disagreement: when two schemes classify the same body under different concepts (one calls it a Network, another calls it a Denomination), both classifications coexist with their own provenance chains.

Code
 
<https://data.global.church/ekklesia/example/classification/gc-core-housechurch>
  a gc:EkklesiaClassification ;
  gc:classificationScheme gc:EkklesiaCoreScheme ;
  gc:classificationConcept gc:KindHouseChurch ;
  gc:classifiedEntity <https://data.global.church/ekklesia/example> ;
  prov:generatedAtTime "2026-05-06T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime .

The gc:Kind... URI prefix on the SKOS concepts (gc:KindHouseChurch, gc:KindNetwork, ...) keeps each classification concept clearly distinct from the OWL classes that name its corresponding body type (gc:EkklesiaCommunity, gc:Organization). The same body may carry multiple classifications across schemes; queries pick the scheme whose authority they want to honor.

Segments: scoping the body for engagement work

Engagement attestations and scoped rollups attach to a gc:EkklesiaSegment, not directly to the body. The segment names which slice of the body's collective is in view: the across-countries footprint, an in-country slice, an in-city congregation, an in-language sub-community, an in-diaspora hub. Every body realizes at least one segment via gc:realizesEkklesiaSegment; multi-country bodies realize many.

Code	Scope Type	When to use it
`EKST-UNI`	Universal	The whole body across time and place — only when a query genuinely needs the universal anchor.
`EKST-NAC`	Network Across Countries	The cross-country rollup of a network or denomination.
`EKST-NIC`	Network In Country	One per (network × ROG country); the canonical join target for country-scoped engagement.
`EKST-LCB`	Local Body	Single-body scope; the default for a Local Church / House Church / Cell Group at one place.
`EKST-CMP`	Local Campus	One campus of a multi-site body. Carries `gc:campusName` and `gc:meetsAt` a venue `gc:Location`. A multi-site body realizes one rollup segment plus one `EKST-CMP` per campus, each linked back to the rollup via `gc:subEkklesiaSegmentOf`.
`EKST-CIT`	In City	City-rollup across networks (e.g., "all Acts 29 congregations in Nairobi").
`EKST-ADM`	In Admin Area	Sub-country admin (state, province, diocese, conference).
`EKST-RGN`	In Region	Multi-country region (HIS ROG region or comparable).
`EKST-CTY`	In Country	Single-country body that isn't a network.
`EKST-LNG`	In Language	Per-language sub-segment within a multi-language body.
`EKST-DIA`	In Diaspora	Diaspora believers gathering in a host place distinct from the homeland.

Each segment must declare exactly one gc:ofEkklesia (the concept it scopes) and exactly one gc:hasEkklesiaScopeType. The corresponding scope dimension is carried via gc:locatedIn, gc:spatialScope, gc:hostPlace / gc:homelandPlace, or gc:temporalScope.

Gatherings: individual events on the body

A gc:EkklesiaGathering models an individual gathering — a Sunday service, a midweek prayer, a discipleship cohort, an outreach event. Linked from the body via gc:hasGathering. Each gathering carries a gc:gatheringForm (Sunday, Midweek, Prayer, BibleStudy, Discipleship, Outreach) plus optional gc:typicalAttendance and gc:actualAttendance.

This is the per-event surface; the body-level summary lives on gc:hasGatheringMode (In Person / Online / Distributed). A body that gathers in person on Sunday and online midweek carries both GatheringInPerson and GatheringOnline at the body level, and mints two gc:EkklesiaGathering instances (one Sunday, one Midweek) for the per-event detail.

Auto-Typing from OrgTypeChurch

Any organization carrying gc:hasOrganizationType gc:OrgTypeChurch is inferred as a gc:EkklesiaCommunity (the body) automatically, and additionally inferred to carry gc:hasEkklesiaForm gc:FormLocalChurch (OrgTypeChurch denotes a single-congregation assembled body, so LocalChurch is the safe default Form). Every directory organization typed as Church appears as a body of Form LocalChurch in queries against the inferred graph without anyone having to assert either triple explicitly. Auto-typed bodies do not carry a Lifecycle stage unless an attester has produced one — Lifecycle is optional.

The reverse is not true: bodies of Form HouseChurch, RegionalChurch, ApostolicBand, or MissionalOrder are not automatically typed as OrgTypeChurch. Form is the finer-grained classification, and any explicit gc:hasEkklesiaForm assertion overrides the auto-default.

Body-to-body and body-to-org relationships

Four properties express how an gc:EkklesiaCommunity connects to other bodies and to other organizations.

`gc:isMemberOf` — denomination, network, or coalition membership

A body's structural membership in a parent organization — denomination, association, regional conference, missional network, coalition.

Code
 
<https://data.global.church/orgs/community-covenant-omaha>
  a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
  gc:isMemberOf <https://data.global.church/org/evangelical-covenant-church> .

Multi-valued: a body may carry several gc:isMemberOf triples when it belongs to several parent organizations simultaneously (e.g., a congregation that is both a denominational member and a coalition signatory).

`gc:wasSentFrom` + `gc:hasSentEkklesia` — sending lineage

The planted-by relationship between a daughter body and its sending body. gc:wasSentFrom points from the daughter to the sender; gc:hasSentEkklesia is the inverse and is materialized automatically when gc:wasSentFrom is asserted.

Code
 
<https://data.global.church/orgs/sterling-park-baptist>
  a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
  gc:wasSentFrom <https://data.global.church/orgs/capitol-hill-baptist> .

Chains compose: a granddaughter of Capitol Hill Baptist carries gc:wasSentFrom to its immediate parent (Sterling Park), and the multi-hop ancestry is recoverable in SPARQL via gc:wasSentFrom+. A body that has sent at least one daughter typically also carries gc:hasEkklesiaLifecycle gc:LifecycleMultiplying.

`gc:meetsAt` — campus segment to its venue

Used on a EKST-CMP campus-segment (not on the body itself) to point at the precise physical venue. gc:meetsAt is a sub-property of prov:atLocation; its range is gc:Location.

Code
 
<https://data.global.church/orgs/lifechurch/campus/oklahoma-city>
  a gc:EkklesiaSegment ;
  gc:hasEkklesiaScopeType gc:Ekk-LocalCampus ;
  gc:campusName "Oklahoma City" ;
  gc:meetsAt <https://data.global.church/orgs/lifechurch/campus/oklahoma-city/venue> ;
  gc:subEkklesiaSegmentOf <https://data.global.church/orgs/lifechurch/segment/in-country> .

gc:meetsAt carries the venue (lat/lng, street); gc:locatedIn on the same segment carries the coded scope dimension (which city or region the slice covers, typically a ROG SKOS concept). A campus-segment legitimately has both.

`gc:Commissioning` + `gc:CommissioningParticipation` — sending as an n-ary event

When the sending event itself is the unit of record — multiple senders, a coach, a date, a target field — model it as a gc:Commissioning activity with one gc:CommissioningParticipation instance per participant. Each participation carries its organization, its role from gc:OrganizationRoleScheme (gc:RoleLead for the canonical sender, gc:RolePartner for coaches and resource partners, plus the other roles in the scheme), and a back-reference to the commissioning.

Code
 
<https://data.global.church/ekklesia-events/cbc-denver/commissioning>
  a gc:Commissioning ;
  prov:generated <https://data.global.church/orgs/cbc-denver> ;
  gc:commissionedAtDate "2023-01-01"^^xsd:date .

<https://data.global.church/ekklesia-events/cbc-denver/commissioning/participation/cbc-san-antonio>
  a gc:CommissioningParticipation ;
  gc:memberOrganization <https://data.global.church/org/community-bible-church-san-antonio> ;
  gc:participatesIn <https://data.global.church/ekklesia-events/cbc-denver/commissioning> ;
  gc:organizationRole gc:RoleLead ;
  gc:associationStatus gc:AttestationStatusActive .

<https://data.global.church/ekklesia-events/cbc-denver/commissioning/participation/sln>
  a gc:CommissioningParticipation ;
  gc:memberOrganization <https://data.global.church/org/strategic-launch-network> ;
  gc:participatesIn <https://data.global.church/ekklesia-events/cbc-denver/commissioning> ;
  gc:organizationRole gc:RolePartner ;
  gc:associationStatus gc:AttestationStatusActive .

The properties gc:memberOrganization, gc:participatesIn, and gc:organizationRole are shared across the family of association classes (gc:OrganizationMembership, gc:EngagementParticipation, gc:ActivityParticipation, gc:AssessmentParticipation, gc:CommitmentParticipation, gc:ResourceContribution); SHACL shapes constrain the per-class type expectations.

The binary gc:wasSentFrom shortcut from the daughter to the canonical sending body is materialized from gc:Commissioning automatically — queries that only need lineage don't have to walk the n-ary structure.

Querying the Ekklesia Model

Find all bodies of a given Form

Code
 
PREFIX gc:   <https://ontology.global.church/core#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>

SELECT ?body ?name WHERE {
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:hasEkklesiaForm gc:FormHouseChurch ;
        gc:name ?name .
}
ORDER BY ?name

Replace gc:FormHouseChurch with any Form concept (gc:FormLocalChurch, gc:FormRegionalChurch, gc:FormApostolicBand, gc:FormMissionalOrder).

Find bodies gathering online

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?body ?name WHERE {
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:hasGatheringMode gc:GatheringOnline ;
        gc:name ?name .
}

Combine modes to find hybrid in-person + online congregations:

Code
 
?body gc:hasGatheringMode gc:GatheringInPerson ,
                          gc:GatheringOnline .

Find Multiplying bodies

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?body ?name ?formLabel WHERE {
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:hasEkklesiaLifecycle gc:LifecycleMultiplying ;
        gc:hasEkklesiaForm ?form ;
        gc:name ?name .
  ?form skos:prefLabel ?formLabel .
}

Compose axes — sodality-aligned house churches that are multiplying

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?body ?name WHERE {
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:hasEkklesiaForm gc:FormHouseChurch ;
        gc:hasEcclesialMode gc:ModeSodality ;
        gc:hasEkklesiaLifecycle gc:LifecycleMultiplying ;
        gc:name ?name .
}

This is the kind of strategic question the model is designed to answer: which sodality-style house-church bodies have shown reproduction? — without needing a dedicated "ReproducingSodalityHouseChurch" class.

Find bodies under a given Ekklesia concept

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?body ?name WHERE {
  ?classification a gc:EkklesiaClassification ;
                  gc:classificationConcept gc:KindNetwork ;
                  gc:classifiedEntity ?body .
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:name ?name .
}

Find per-country segments of a network body

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?body ?segment ?country WHERE {
  ?body gc:realizesEkklesiaSegment ?segment .
  ?segment gc:hasEkklesiaScopeType gc:Ekk-NetworkInCountry ;
           gc:locatedIn ?country .
}

Find all member bodies of a parent organization

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>

SELECT ?body ?name WHERE {
  ?body a gc:EkklesiaCommunity ;
        gc:isMemberOf <https://data.global.church/org/evangelical-covenant-church> ;
        rdfs:label ?name .
}
ORDER BY ?name

Walk a sending lineage chain

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>

SELECT ?daughter ?ancestor WHERE {
  ?daughter gc:wasSentFrom+ ?ancestor .
  ?ancestor rdfs:label ?ancestorLabel .
}

gc:wasSentFrom+ is the SPARQL property-path that walks one or more sending hops, recovering the full multi-generation lineage.

List the campuses of a multi-site body

Code
 
PREFIX gc: <https://ontology.global.church/core#>

SELECT ?campusName ?venue WHERE {
  <https://data.global.church/orgs/lifechurch> gc:realizesEkklesiaSegment ?segment .
  ?segment gc:hasEkklesiaScopeType gc:Ekk-LocalCampus ;
           gc:campusName ?campusName ;
           gc:meetsAt ?venue .
}
ORDER BY ?campusName

Where the Axes Live in the Ontology

Each axis is a SKOS ConceptScheme loaded into the <https://data.global.church/vocabs/> named graph alongside other classification vocabularies:

Scheme	URI
`gc:EkklesiaFormScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#EkklesiaFormScheme`
`gc:EcclesialModeScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#EcclesialModeScheme`
`gc:GatheringModeScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#GatheringModeScheme`
`gc:EkklesiaLifecycleScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#EkklesiaLifecycleScheme`
`gc:EkklesiaCoreScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#EkklesiaCoreScheme`
`gc:EkklesiaScopeTypeScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#EkklesiaScopeTypeScheme`
`gc:GatheringFormScheme`	`https://ontology.global.church/core#GatheringFormScheme`

Full per-concept definitions, scope notes, and relationships are published at the Ontology Reference under SKOS Vocabularies.

Last modified on May 25, 2026

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