[Trapped]

(explanation up front: when I say "the church in [city]", I am not referring to the local churches).

Nell, I agree with you that it is descriptive and not prescriptive. "Do this until I come" or "and you do the same" could easily have been present in relation to describing the churches, but it glaringly wasn't.

But not only is it descriptive, I also think that it is still an objective fact today, albeit manifested in a different way than what was described in the Bible. I am pretty sure I know what exposition Ohio referred to in his post prior to this one (Ohio you are welcome to repost as it is an excellent one), and IIRC, it brings up the matter of "the church in [so and so's house]" in the Bible. Even though those house churches existed, in my view, it doesn't take away from the objective fact that on the city-level, the church in [city] is all the believers in that city, which includes the house churches and any other assemblies that met. The church in [house] describes a smaller level, and the church in [city] just describes a larger version of that thing.

The church in Houston exists at this very moment, and it is not on MLK Boulevard (or wherever). It is not one group of people in one specific place. It is all the believers in Houston. In other words, it's not that there "should be" one church in Houston. There is right now. All the believers are the church in Houston. It's an objective fact, regardless of if a single one of those believers is aware of it. That's kind of what I was trying to say.

Maybe a better way to say it is that it is a mindset that we should have ("that they all may be one"). It is not.......I don't know what the word is...tangible? You can't necessarily point to it - "the church in Houston is right over there". It just is (in the divine realm, if you want me to use an LC-type phrase to try to clarify). But if you want to see the actual expression of the church in [a city], it is just in our living and treating of each other and others.