Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake
As far as I can tell, the entire concept of having one church per city seems to be an almost childishly simplistic reading of Paul's letters which refer to the church in some particular city. If we really want to be semantically strict, the only true "church" is the body of Christ, the universal church consisting of all believers. I think most Christians understand the distinction that when we say "church" in reference to a building, it's really just shorthand for "a meeting place for members of the Church", it doesn't mean that the Body of Christ is actually contained within that physical place. The idea that there is one church per city, and each of these city-based churches is somehow distinct and separate as an entity, seems to directly contradict the idea of the universal corporate Church.
It also seems strange that we would tie something divine to a man-made secular structure--cities, after all, are just arbitrary geographic boundaries created for political reasons. What happens when two cities merge? Does the decision of politicians miraculously result in the Body of Christ being rearranged? Merging several cities to create large mega-cities has been popular practice in urban development over the last few decades, how have LCs actually responded when this occurs?
Other denominations often name their churches after cities, neighborhoods or streets, but they don't make any claims about the city being some kind of divine basis for the unique expression of the Church, it's simply used to identify the location of the building...
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Jake,
One of the first things that got my attention about the Bible was shared by Bill Mallon when he was visiting some friends in Dallas, after leaving "it". It seems almost too logical to have been missed, yet I/we missed it.
In the Bible are two categories of scripture: 1) prescriptive, and 2) descriptive. If you Google it, you'll see that this is a commonly accepted practice on accurate interpretation of the Bible.
To me, the entire dogma of one church/one city is wrongly based on a description of the situation at the time when the church was in its infancy. It was never intended to be a "prescription" or command to be obeyed for all times. That's simply the way the church began. If not in cities, then where? Surely not all believers even lived in cities. The church met in cities because that's where larger numbers of believers lived. Therefore, the church was described according to the city.
I have never seen verses that command or prescribe that the church is confined to the city limits. All the verses use the location of the church, by city, to deliver a message or make some salient point.
The term "practical expression of the church" is used by Lee to prop up his argument. This term is not in the Bible. I believe we should say what the Bible says and not invent terms to support our dogma. We should also read the Bible in a way to pay attention to whether there is a command to be obeyed or simply a picture being painted for context to describe an event or situation.
Nell