One building you can point at: a stone church on a corner, with a door, a bell, and people walking in on Sunday morning. Kirk can be thought of as the northern way of saying that same building. Once the word has that building in it, it can also stand for all of them together, and for the national church those buildings belong to.
The evidence traces kirk to Northern Middle English kyrke, possibly from Old Norse kirkja, beside Old English ciriche, which became church. The two words are relatives that grew up in different parts of the island.
資料顯示 kirk 來自中古英語北方的 kyrke，可能與古諾斯語 kirkja 有關；而 church 走的是古英語 ċiriċe 這條路。兩個字是同源的親戚，只是在島上不同地區各自長大，所以今天一個聽起來像蘇格蘭，一個是通用說法。
Wiktionary (kaikki extract) entries for kirk / Kirk supplied in this evidence packet: source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:619299781:8943, etymology_text 'Inherited from Northern Middle English kyrke, possibly borrowed...' (Old Norse kirkja; cf. Old English ċiriċe).
One branch
一棟教堂，和它背後的整個教會
兩個意思共用同一個畫面，差別只在看得多遠：近看是一棟房子，遠看是這些房子連起來的一個教會。
noun · C1
A church: the building where Christians meet to pray. Kirk is the ordinary everyday word for it in Scotland and in the north of England, where people say kirk where other speakers say church.
教堂