I have had this book – How to Read a Church by Richard Taylor – forever and a day. No idea why but…!

On the first page he says:

“As we will see, early Christians did not meet in buildings dedicated to worship, but in common meeting places or one another’s homes. The word ‘church’ therefore referred to a body of Christian believers. Nowadays the word retains this meaning, as well as referring to the building that Christians worship in. To distinguish them, when referring to a body of Christians, I use a capital ‘C’, as in the Eastern Church; when referring to the building itself, I use a small ‘c’.”

Mr Taylor also talks about the symbol of the Griffin found in many churches:

“The griffin was a monster with the head and wings of an eagle, and the body and legs of a lion. They were good at gold: different legends had them knowing instinctively where gold could be found, making their nests out of gold, or guarding gold mines. The griffin was used as a symbol for Jesus, for a number of reasons. The two elements of the griffin were like the human (lion on earth) and divine (eagle in the sky) aspects of Jesus’ nature; the lion and eagle were respectively kings of the animals and the birds; and it combined a lion’s strength with an eagle’s vigilance. It remained, though, a tricky image.”