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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 30
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Groups Acts 17:24 tells us that
God doesn’t live in buildings made by men.
We all know that, but I’m not convinced we all live what we
know. Knowing something and
living out what we know are two different things. I’m
sure you will agree with me on that point. You might conclude from
all that I’ve said that I believe
“home groups” or “house churches” are the way to go and that’s
what the New Testament teaches. Well,
that’s not exactly so. I’ve had lots of
experiences with “home groups” or “house churches” over the
years. The “House Church
Movement” of the last forty years probably wouldn’t call a “home
group” a “house church” since home groups are normally more casual
and less organized. Traditional
churches use the term “home groups” when thinking in terms of their
small groups that meet in homes instead of their church buildings.
Those in the “House Church Movement” view themselves as a
full-fledged church, not just a little group meeting in a house.
As you know, for the
first twenty years of my life church was all about meeting in a building
that was called a church but couldn’t be a church because a church
isn’t a building. When I
grew of age in the Lord and left the comfort of that church, my friends
and I, for the most part, met in homes in the beginning days. That was
only to be expected since we had no other place to meet. Further along the way we
also gathered in parks, in school rooms, in
hotels and motels, in community and civic buildings, and wherever else
that seemed convenient at the time. The place in which we gathered
wasn’t important to us. Getting
together was the important thing because
Jesus had joined us together.
It’s like when you first fell in love.
You just wanted to be with the one you loved, and it didn’t
really matter where that was. A
park bench might well have been one of your favourite meeting places. Back in the early
1970’s while traveling on a train I sat beside an older man who I
discovered was a Christian. My
heart was overjoyed that I’d met a brother in Jesus on the train.
When I went to shake his hand in an expression of joy, he coolly
responded as if to say, “so I’m a Christian, what’s the big deal
about that”? I
wasn’t used to such a mentality. My
friends and I were normally overjoyed when we discovered a new brother
in Christ. It was this
mentality that created the desire for us to gather together over the
next eighteen years. At
times I felt we were like Old Testament So do I believe the New
Testament teaches us to meet in homes?
Not at all. Home
groups can be just as traditional as church building groups.
I’ve seen Sunday meetings in homes that look no different than
those in a church building. They
had a home-made pulpit, chairs arranged in rows, an offering plate that
was passed around after a couple of songs, a sermon, and a closing
prayer. Clearly, the
room in which people meet is not the issue.
The New Testament does
not teach us where to meet. Neither
does it teach us when to meet, or how often to meet.
It does teach what to do when we meet.
1 Corinthians 14 teaches that a gathering of the saints is all
about each saint contributing to the gathering, so we shouldn’t get
too carried away with our meeting place, but we do. That being said, church
buildings that might have once been an expression of faith and worship
have become an expression of the influence that secular culture has on
us. In my opinion much of the thinking concerning church buildings today
is similar to that of the
“paganization of Christianity” that took place in the fourth
century. Church buildings
back then were built to look
like pagan buildings of worship. Christians
copied paganism in this respect in order to make the non-Christian feel
comfortable in church buildings. The truth of the matter is that we are
not to accommodate the sinner, but lead him to a place of repentance and
faith so he can accommodate himself to Jesus.
Our tendency over the years has been to make the gospel
more palatable so that more people will fill our pews.
Besides this, church
buildings have become increasingly more expensive to build and to
maintain. Way too much
effort is directed towards raising funds to meet the needs of the
building, which takes away from our primary mission.
I know of church groups today that are feeling the economic pinch
because of world economic problems and because of the transient nature
of “church attenders” these days.
So the attempt to maintain the building, along with other
budgetary needs becomes all-consuming.
I’m reminded of the
Laodicean church of Revelation 3:14 to 22. This church became rich by
acquiring and accumulating a vast amount of possessions.
They needed nothing. They
were self-sufficient. This
is the meaning of Revelation 3:17. In
my thinking, this is the state of much of the western church of today.
Jesus was not impressed with this church.
He thought the church was pitifully shameful, and was ready to
spit them out of His mouth. That
doesn’t sound very nice, but that’s called judgment, and that might
just be our fate if we don’t repent of our excessiveness.
The New Testament neither promotes church buildings or house churches. It promotes the church as being a living Body of believers, a counter-cultural community of Christ. This church focuses on relationships between members of the Body and the work they are to perform, both within meetings and outside of meetings. That should be our focus.
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