Is this a fair statement?
New Testament Christianity: The church went out to the world to preach the Gospel to people and then welcomed those who were saved into the church.
Traditional Christianity: Bring people into the church to hear the Gospel preached.
If not, why not?
3 comments:
Good enough for government work, Arthur. And then some. The pastor of my last church compared the two covenants on this idea: OT = come and see, and NT = go and tell. If we're supposed to go and tell, yet tell people to come and hear, doesn't this explain a bit about why there are so many marginal people in church in our culture? Your example also makes the issue of church membership much easier. Everybody who assembles is already a baptized Christian and there is no reason to divide the body between formal members and regular attenders.
Both.
I think this is true if you want to use very broad strokes, but I'm not so sure it's accurate when you get down to the day-to-day life of believers in either the NT or current time. I've noticed more and more that the main New Testament characters - the ones we have information about - were the missionaries, not the everyday working people. Still working out what that means to my understanding of how local congregations should work....
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