Andrew Barry reveals:
The word "company" was actually a shortening for "company of adventurers". Like "The Honourable Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay" aka "The Hudson Bay Trading Company". Perhaps in this sense our churches are "companies". ;) "The Daring Company of Adventurers in Jannali Caring for the Soules of the Saints and Reaching the Lost in the Westerly Partes of the Southerland Shire of Sydney". However I should say that these companies were not so honourable nor egalitarian. Spin doctors were alive back then.
