[YP0534]

Originally Posted by Only by Grace

A quick question from the Baptist bleacher seat...from my perspective, I assemble at a "local" church in my community...one of say, 8-10 meeting places. The "local" assemblies meeting places happen to have "Baptist," "Church of Christ," "Community Church," "Foursquare Church," and a few other titles on their signs. However, I know that I could walk into any one of them on any given Sunday and break bread with these fellow believers. Likewise, if other believers show up to break bread in our fellowship, no one is withholding the bread. So, where does the assumption come that we (who attend a fellowship with a sign on the lawn) are divisive or are insisting that "we are the one genuine church" in the neighborhood. That really just isn't happening...at least not in my small community. So, could it be the group that is doing that kind of "insisting" is the one who is divisive?

We do have "community" gatherings, where we invite all believers in the area to join in at one of the buildings...but again, the practicality of it all is that there is not a building large enough to hold us all on a regular basis. So, we coexist, each congregation, or assembly if you will, worshipping with our "few" brothers and sisters -- our group meets at 10:45 a.m, while there are two services 8:30 (contemporary) and 11:00 (traditional) worship services at a group who assembles a few miles away. Why is the assumption (not yours, necessarily, but someone is assuming and teaching), that there is something wrong with that model or practice. And furthermore, in my rural community of a couple of "sister towns," there is no Lee-like or Nee-like assembly that I know of...so what do the local believers in our area do? Do we wait for someone to claim the ground and then all head over there? Or, should we build a giant church in the middle of town and all meet there? Or, should we not be meeting in our current buildings at all becauses the group that has gathered in one place might speak in tongues, and in another place they might not? Or, in one congregation they sing hymns and in another they sing with a guitar and drum? I don't see us as divisive Christians...rather, we are all just "practically" assemblying with brothers and sisters where we seem to "fit," but we are not fighting one another or "insisting" we've got it all figured out...my guess is that we would all find that while we "disagree" on some things, we all agree that we are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and that we are saved by His grace, and that we long to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Can you explain why (or if) (from the LC perspective or from any of your individual perspectives) this would be considered a wrong way for Christians to meet on a Lord's day, or to break bread with one another?

Thanks...trying to understand the mindset...

I think maybe your small-town situation is significantly different from many but still I would say that it should be better without a sign on the lawn since the tendency is to rally around the flag, at least on some level. (Which, not coincidentally is the precise error of a group of people moving somewhere and "taking the ground!") And surely you are aware that there are some, even many, groups who would refuse the bread breaking in oneness that you suggest is possible among the congregations in your place.

The problem is partly one of terminology on a certain level. You consider each of the meeting places to be an "assembly" but we are discussing the fact that each of the believers in those congregations is actually part of the one "assembly" in that place and your special group meetings are potentially a difficulty for the practical oneness with the other believers in that place. It's not that saying you are the "one true church" is the problem; rather in your case, it's the opposite issue entirely. Probably your fitting in in a particular congregation is according to your personal preference or family tradition rather than the cross of Christ and we really should submit to the Lord with regard to where and how we meet. Your memberships in the various groups are certainly not fully interchangeable, even if they aren't as rigid as they once were in Christian history. And surely there are other groups which do not feel to participate in what might be called a trans-denominational fellowship that you would invite them to, probably mostly on the basis of your particular sign, which they do not accept or condone. Your sign can become a cause for stumbling both to yourselves and to others. At the same time, you don't need to have a properly constituted establishment of LSM either. You and the other believers in that town are completely in control of whether or not you meet as the Lord desires. No imprimatur from a pope or college of cardinals could affect the reality anyway.

At the end of the day, I think the Lord is a whole lot less concerned about the sign on the lawn than Local Church people think He is. Lee dismissed the Lord's blessing and presence in the other places and I believe this is evidence of his lack of clear vision concerning the reality of the assembly. For Lee, the assembly was something of a defintion which we should endeavor to have precisely match the scriptures and, hopefully, but sometimes almost as an afterthought, there should be the life and love and glory of God present there. What I've been studying and discussing recently is the opposite view entirely, a view that is aided by discarding the antiquated notion of catholicism but instead focusing on the the reality of what really is the assembly. When you meet and do not exclude and God is manifest among you, I would defy any one who insisted that their definition is greater than the reality of God's glory. Talk about an empty form! If we meet and Christ is there, while we can always seek to do better, we should not be too critical of the details and problems.

Essentially, you propose an analysis of denominational groups as "parties" within the local assembly rather than true "divisions." Without going too much into the issues of heirarchy and practical functioning of the members at this point, I think you see my point about practicality. Ultimately, one giant building isn't practical anyways, as any large city-church among the Local Church denomination with multiple meeting halls is testimony to. At the same time, some believers could carefully avoid meeting with the believers in Hall 3 for one reason or another and that would be no different than the signs on the lawn as far as that goes. And also, I know the Chinese and Spanish-speaking saints always have their own kind of things going on in the Local Church and that can be quite practically divisive as well.

But, I'd challenge you about this much, anyways: what's practical about the sign on the lawn except to distinguish your group from the other groups? In what way do these things help you to gain Christ or minister Christ to others? I'm not trying to be condemning here but just asking you to recognize that the signs aren't maybe such a great idea. And the signs actually represent your preferences and that's probably not the best idea in either since Christ wants us to be practically one with both the tongues-speakers and the non-tongues-speakers. The sign doesn't actually say "tongues-speakers only" but it kind of does once you get inside and the people meeting there pressure you to seek "The Baptism." Surely we can all come up with other examples of this sort of thing.

But if there are practically separate groups and there are non-sinful customs that grow up among them in their meetings but they remain in real and living fellowship with all the other believers in the general assembly of God in that place, and not merely among those with the same sign, the sign doesn't really mean much anyway, does it? In fact, the rigid enforcement of uniformity not only among the smaller groups but even among the general assemblies is just a huge error that is born out of the concept of "universal church" that I just can't seem to get over.

So, in other words, I hear you but I'd suggest that it's way too easy to become accustomed to and even protective of the distinctions and separations and this is precisely what the enemy is always attempting to engineer among us...