I was a-wandering about the blog world today and came across a post on family integrated churches at the blog of the Midwest Center for Theological Studies. Then, as I am prone to do, I checked a few more posts and read another one about the family integrated church movement.
So in the post Sam Waldron says:
I have also discovered with encouragement that the same folks believe strongly in the local church as taught in our confession. They also strongly disagree with and deplore the tendency of some folks associated with their movement to leave local churches in favor of in-home fellowships which have no claim to be biblically organized local churches.
Nothing more unbiblical and deplorable than an “in-home fellowship”!
I guess that raises the question. What exactly is a “biblically organized local church”? It rolls so easily off the tongue or keyboard in this case but what does that even mean? Does the Bible give us organizational guidelines or commands? There are some examples, like Paul exhorting Timothy to appoint elders in every town in Crete (Titus 1:5). What is interesting is that Timothy was appointing elders in every town, not in each biblically organized local church. It seems to me that what we have here is not a bunch of semi-autonomous local churches, each with their own pastor but rather the church in a given area (in this case Crete) was seen as one church with local elders and clearly as well they would have met in homes. Was an elder present in every home meeting? Is that necessary, if an elder is not present is there a prohibition on the church meeting? The Bible is utterly silent on these questions and I hesitate to allow someone to impose their understanding of what makes a "biblically organized local church" to fill in the blanks.
So what do you think? What makes a gathering of the church a “biblically organized local churches”?
3 comments:
Arthur,
Very good questions. Of course, churches already existed in Ephesus and Crete before Timothy or Titus appointed elders.
-Alan
Arthur,
Nearly twenty years ago a young man came to my wife and I and asked for a private Bible study. We were delighted to accede to his request.
He told others, who told others, who asked to join us. Most were believers with whom Sam Waldron could have no argument regarding soteriology.
We were a local church from the very beginning.
Arthur,
I really don't have a "biblical" answer to this. Probably because there isn't one. As straightforward as I can be, it might be when a group of Christians gather together and believe themselves to be a church! Of course, they would endeavoer to do the things that a church does.
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