What do you think of this?
I like what he is saying that there are limits on what the gathered church is able to do. If you go to Bethlehem Baptist, you are going to get deep Bible exposition. You are not going to get close-knit fellowship.
I am not sure this is his point, but I thought it was interesting. The big assembly perhaps serves the purpose of preparing and equipping the church for ministry. The real work of the church in ministering, discipleship, fellowship happens outside of the church. Do we have to have one or the other? Can there be a place for both?
Am I making too big a leap here?
1 comment:
No, you're not making a big leap here. I've too long felt this divide between preaching and the one-anothers. The model Piper's church follows is widespread throughout evangelicalism.
It's like this: gather on Sunday for preaching, but using gifts for edification of each other? Well, you'll have to figure out a way to do that yourself, and by the way you're not doing it. It's all your fault, all you pew sitters.
One thing that has bothered me about this model is when we hear, "Worship isn't limited to an hour on Sunday. You need to carry this out during the rest of the week!", what the preacher means and how we receive it are two different things. The preacher wants us to do those things the rest of the week that we don't do on Sunday with the same fervor we carry with us into singing and listening to the sermon. We, on the other hand, unwittingly realize that there are no one-anothers occurring in church on Sunday, so we carry on the lack of one-anothers during the week with the same furvor as we practice the lack of one-anothers during church. Just like the preacher said.
When we are admonished to follow an example that doesn't exist, doing nothing fulfills the following of that example.
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