Church
What is a church?
Have you gone to church this week?
New Testament churches met in homes. That means that they were small groups.
Worship Centers
Are buildings designated for large meetings of corporate worship and or religious instruction. These are not what we call churches.
We like to use these buildings secondarily to unite the house churches for conferences, large corporate worship, seminars, training, and so forth.
Churches
Are small groups of people who are stable in their commitment to relate to one another regularly in agreed upon Biblical sacraments, liturgies, and protocols toward unity in the faith.
Sacraments
Today, we have lost touch with the meaning of these sacraments and liturgies, and are ill-equipped to practice them in our homes together. We lack the Biblical understanding from the lens of the Jewish culture that the First-Century Church of the book of Acts enjoyed together – with all the structure that it brings – even in a home.
Non-Denominational
For example, there are as many notions of the meaning of the sacraments of Communion and Baptisms as there are “Non-Denominational” Christians. Therefore, there has been a famine for Word of God. It is not polite to teach in depth on these and many other issues to bring unity in the Faith in a “Non-Denominational” context; such as a city-wide prayer meeting, a Para-Church organization, or a “Non-Denominational” Worship Center that calls itself a church.
Unity in the Faith
When people elect to take your class on the other hand, it is polite to teach a specific way of understanding and implementing the Bible.
The Past
There are two types of church movements that cannot seem to get or stay off the ground in the USA. Those:
- Offering specific (in depth) Bible teaching NOT at the expense of the freedom of the individual and collective movement of His spirit, AND demonstrating conversion, rather than transfer growth.
- House Church, especially Charismatic and/or Pentecostal house churches.
The relative success of the small groups associated with Brick & Mortar movements who achieved unity of the faith in item 1 offers some hope for our country in these regards.
Unity in the Faith
By achieving actual real unity in the faith under the Apostle’s teaching provided digitally toward agreement in liturgies and sacraments, we provide enough structure to set the expectation to meet God – balanced with the freedom to be surprised by how He moves in, among, and through us.
Leadership
The perceived informality of the idea of having house church scares many Christians away. We may all embrace the idea of a nameless, faceless, humble army of servants of the Lord. However, we have seen those who perceive our peaceful love-feast to have a power-vacuum that they feel “called” to step in to.
If you sense that the personal and/or group prophecies and/or ministry or relationships contain teaching or preaching, or are directive, (at all, and especially if it goes against or beyond the Bible teaching in the Curriculum) please email abuse at apostolicfaithmission.org
We encourage those with a gift of teaching to contribute to our online body of knowledge, and those who feel called to leadership to pursue and develop the kind of personal, social, and spiritual growth as outlined here.