Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
I think what I'm trying to say is that I think it's legit not as a practice, but as the understanding of a spiritual reality.
|
I agree with this. The church in the city is similar to the universal church, it is all the believers in that city. But the bible never says they all have to meet together, nor especially that they all have to be under one group of tightly coordinated leaders. The instance of house churches strongly suggests this.
This can be easily shown by simply asking "How do you determine who these leaders are?" The LR elders just say it's them, and that's it. Really? How does anyone really know? So, you just can't get to there from here, and so you have to give people the freedom to make up their own minds. It can't be forced, and certainly no one group of leaders gets to claim it exclusively.
And the Bible never, ever says that Christians have to meet "as" the church in the city. It only says we are to meet in Jesus' name. Period. Requiring that they meet "as" the church in the city to be the church and claim the realities of the church is a
false teaching. Period.
It's absolutely absurd for any subset of the church in a city to say that Christians who don't meet with THEM are divisive. It's ridiculous and really should be laughed at.