[Cal]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

The "ground of locality" is to leave the denominations and have only Christ as the ground in whatever locality you reside. This means I will only take the name of Christ as my identify, and none other. If we fellowship in a denomination we realize we do not belong to it, Christ is still our ground. The ground of a denomination is whatever organization or institution that denomination represents. The Roman Catholic church for example, in London, has the Papacy as its ground, not Christ. The RC church in New York, also has the Papacy as its ground, not Christ. The principle of "no other name" other than Christ applies here.

Yes, we've heard all this already. But the existence of house churches in the NT shows that you can be part of the city church and part of a house church also. Just like you can be part of the universal church and part of the city church.

There is nothing that says if you belong to a city church (and as you said you cannot not belong to it, because it is a reality) that you cannot also belong to a house church. And the Bible gives good evidence that this was often the case. Paul addresses the church in the house and it doesn't make sense in context that these churches were the same as the city church. That right there blows your theory up.

If you can belong to a city church and a house church, and the Bible shows you can, then it should be fine to belong to the city church and a community church. The fact that a community church has a name is irrelevant. There is nothing in the Bible that prohibits this. Names are for identification, not division.

Again, these principles you cite are not biblical. They are Nee's concoctions.

Since a believer in Christ is already a member of the local church, he cannot join another and cannot leave it.

As I pointed out, this is a false assumption that the Bible contradicts.

What bugs me about LCMers is they talk about God hating division and yet some of them are some of the most divisive people on earth. They are the classic case of people trying to remove splinters from other's eyes while having logs in there own. They think not being divisive means following a few outward rules, "Don't take a name, meet as the church in the city and, voila!, you are not divisive! Forget about how you sued other Christians, bad-mouthed them, called them 'poor pitiful Christianity' and generally treated then as invalid."