Why the focus on just a few people functioning (up front) in our gatherings?

[Vine Abider]

2 hours ago, Sower said:

The same way you would know it. Watch and listen. I find myself defending the "traditional" church so often when church bashing here gets under my skin. The internet forum is a favorite place to air grievances of the so many problems within the churches today chant, and everybody joins in with their reasons NOT attending any more. It should be obvious to anyone here if you have ever participated in so often how the right way (according to their scriptural understanding) the church should be run. Arm chair shepherds.

Why not take a poll to see how many attend a traditional assembled body of believers weekly, and are faithful to that body, not just in word but in deed.

I appreciate your question, William.
 

And in the end, He will get His glorious church, without any negative thing!  I think we do need to be careful - it is His church and He loves it/us. I don't want to be perceived as attacking the ekklesia, but rather the suppressing system that has been so pervasive in most of it the past two millennia.

2 hours ago, WilliamL said:

Tradition is the problem, just as it was in the days of the Pharisees, and it is largely why people have been leaving such churches in droves. Traditions of men, which Jesus castigated.

Sure, there are plenty of well-meaning pastors and churches, just as there were well-meaning Pharisees; but those who follow the traditions of men will always restrict the leading of the Holy Spirit.

While I enjoy being in an assembly that is highly participative, I also enjoy being with Christians wherever and however they gather. Being with other groups happens mostly when we travel, but I know the Lord has worked in me to be able to fellowship with most anyone who professes Christ. It's actually easy, if the focus remains on Him and not our perceived differences.

And as far as being a "lone ranger" out there - we were not made this way by God!  He has placed us as members in the body as He sees fit.  (1 Cor 12:18)   The Christian life is a body life. I know that I know that I know that I must be in fellowship ongoing, for my own health and for the benefit of others. And while online fellowship is fine, nothing substitutes for the life we partake in by face-to-face interaction!  

This verse in Hebrews 10:25 sums it up: "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."  

If we want to grow properly in Christ, I believe we must be interacting in a gathering where we are giving our bodies as a living sacrifice. (Rom 12:1)

[Vine Abider]

12 hours ago, Yes, and said:

I just onboarded to this forum today because I wanted to respond to the OP with this:

I believe your questions have been asked and answered in a number of ways, by many different voices over the millennia. And now just in this thread a number of answers have been offered. I'd just like to add for those who have an intellectual/studious bent, consider getting a copy of Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity. I've been somewhat of an Ellul student since the early 90s and believe he had a truly prophetic voice, and yet wasn't mystical at all in his writing. He was like a skilled surgeon with a sharp scalpel, finely dissecting all of the different forces—sociological, spiritual, etc.—being brought to bear in the world as it is and was (and yes, as it would come to be (see The Technological Society)). He wasn't reductionist, e.g. not blaming it all on Constantine, but rather he described the multiple forces at work—including moralism, the rise of Islam, nihilism, the principalities and powers—which have brought us to the point wherein we look at what we now call Christianity and wonder why it looks so very different from what we clearly see described in the NT.

Again, definitely worth a read if you are inclined along the intellectual lines. He couldn't help being who he was as an intellectual, so some of his writings are very dense; very opaque. I was only able to understand about maybe 10-15% of what he wrote in one of his books, The Humiliation of the Word, but it was enough to begin to have a grasp on what people say about post-modernism, of the desire to use language, and reduce language, to nothing more than a tool for power and control.

Oh, and if you take up thinking about the idea of Babylon, esp. as described as Mystery Babylon in the Revelation, consider reading The Meaning of the City.

Thanks for the reference - I'll check it out! And in other discussions on here, we've talked about (as you mentioned) how the ekklesia was already going in the direction of becoming an organization (rather than something organic) with a systematized hierarchy, some time before Constantine.  It is just man's natural propensity to want to organize and control.  Of course it was being done for "worthwhile reasons," like to confront widespread heresy, etc.

BTW: @AdHoc turned me onto what looks like a similar book by GH Lang called "The Churches of God."  In it Lang describes the process of this organizing in the first, second and third centuries. Had you heard of it?

[Anne2]

On 7/5/2023 at 7:43 PM, Sower said:

 

The average church preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified has all kinds of problems for sure, as with any large family of different age, sex, culture etc, still trying to stay within the confines of scripture.

Yet generation after generation of assembled believers has prevailed since the start, and scripture says it will prevail, according to scripture.
 "Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live."    John 14:19

I would reckon that the vast majority of believers today were saved in an average  church, or church ministry of some kind, even with all the so called church 'defects'.

Godly leadership is God given, I believe, no mater one or a dozen leaders.
I only have been a member of one church, with average 100-120 members, or 25-35 families, throughout several generations. We do not enlarge facilities but start mission churches more local to the members neighborhoods.

"We start mission Churches".

It is a different location by the authority you ordain correct?

Edited July 7, 2023 by Anne2

[Sower]

1 hour ago, Anne2 said:

"We start mission Churches".

It is a different location by the authority you ordain correct?

Not sure your question.
The mission churches were many miles from our church which we financed and physically constructed. The new church was autonomous, not under our supervision.

Don't know what "by the authority you ordain correct?"  means.

We, our members,  as a body saw the need, agreed to do something, and did it.

[Sower]

2 hours ago, Vine Abider said:

And as far as being a "lone ranger" out there - we were not made this way by God!  He has placed us as members in the body as He sees fit.  (1 Cor 12:18)   The Christian life is a body life.

      That's the gist of my posts, VA.

Every believer should be (is) a part of a body of believers, somewhere.
Should they not fellowship/study/fulfill their part, they suffer as does that body.
This weakens that body and the individual believer. God will place each part where it is best for them, and the body. 

1 Corinthians 12:18 in Other Translations

18 "But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him."

18 "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose"

18 "But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it."

 

 

 

[Anne2]

3 hours ago, Sower said:

Not sure your question.
The mission churches were many miles from our church which we financed and physically constructed. The new church was autonomous, not under our supervision.

Don't know what "by the authority you ordain correct?"  means.

We, our members,  as a body saw the need, agreed to do something, and did it.

Just trying to understand the vertical vs horizontal. So the new Church could teach whatever the spirit told them? I mean you can't go without some type of authority going on could you?

[Sower]

10 minutes ago, Anne2 said:

Just trying to understand the vertical vs horizontal. So the new Church could teach whatever the spirit told them? I mean you can't go without some type of authority going on could you?

Now I understand, and thanks Anne.

The first mission church I was involved with (40 yrs ago)   had members of our church that drove many miles to attend, and these members would be those that helped build and financed, and started the new church, along with other believers in that area. It became a more 'local' assembly of believers, in their 'neighborhood'.

These were baptist members of our church, and their church became an autonomous baptist assembly, that taught Jesus Christ and him crucified, and the inerrancy of the scriptures. Yet they were on their own so to speak, as we trusted God to lead, and not affiliated with a specific sect or convention, nor our church.

Their shepherd and elders and deacons were those with the responsibility of the sheep. And these people (original members of our church)  were under the authority of God, and the scriptures.

My point is our church I attend is over 130 yrs old, and can hold maybe 200 members. It did not expand the size much, be has built/helped other churches to start new ministries local to their members. I can not guess over all those years how many Christian believers came to a 'saving knowledge' through the ministries of this old "traditional" church. But then, maybe God has decided to change HIS methods, and a new generation church is at hand??........

Hope this clarifies, Anne...

[Vine Abider]

29 minutes ago, Anne2 said:

Just trying to understand the vertical vs horizontal. So the new Church could teach whatever the spirit told them? I mean you can't go without some type of authority going on could you?

Of course the early church was simply attuned to the Spirit and the Lord provided apostles to give direction and writings as they were led of the Spirit.  Therefore the only authority these ones had were the apostles and apostolic writings, along with the old testament - and the inner anointing Spirit!  Man's authority was added leaven. 

[Anne2]

1 hour ago, Vine Abider said:

Of course the early church was simply attuned to the Spirit and the Lord provided apostles to give direction and writings as they were led of the Spirit.  Therefore the only authority these ones had were the apostles and apostolic writings, along with the old testament - and the inner anointing Spirit!  Man's authority was added leaven. 

So there is no authority at all? Anybody can walk in and start teaching, prophesying? Of course not, as you are drawing a line Between God's authority and man's authority.

So, you have some kind of leadership/oversight.

Even here, we see these positions

The Eastern and Oriental churches are not at all unfamiliar with various churches having an autocephaly.

 

It was the Roman Pope that rejected that notion. So again, I am attempting to understand where the difference is being drawn in horizontal vs vertical?

Edited July 7, 2023 by Anne2

[Vine Abider]

1 hour ago, Anne2 said:

So there is no authority at all? Anybody can walk in and start teaching, prophesying? Of course not, as you are drawing a line Between God's authority and man's authority.

Of course there is some kind of authority in the body God designed. But He didn't set up the kind of overt hierarchy present in most of the church now, but rathe something more organic.