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Originally Posted by Ohio
I frankly don't see evidence that this was "the way" the early church met.
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StG's Point 1) makes no sense to me. If you have house churches, you can have more than OCOC. There's obviously more than one house per city.
Jesus mentioned "my" ekklesia in Matthew 16, strongly implying that there are ekklesia not of Jesus. The ekklesia dismissed by the City Counselor in Acts 19:41 was clearly not of Jesus. In order to make OCOC "the way of the NT" we need ekklesia that aren't churches and churches that aren't ekklesia. And I'm not sure the NT gives us that liberty.
Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, the Lord said he'd be there. Is that perforce limited to one location per metropolis? I find no suggestion in the NT; rather the opposite. So "church" in this vein then becomes instead an ecclesiastical administrative body, which we try, like Watchman Nee and the Brethren, to re-create (and impose) today, whole cloth, from a few verses. (But it doesn't mean "meeting" as it did in NT-era Greek.)
And it looks like Nee modified his NT-modeled Church every few years, as the situation on the ground changed. Turns out the Bible was a prop. And I daresay it would be for us all, if we had to play "acting God". No, better to meet with whomever (even the [gasp!] Baptists and [gasp!] Congregationalists) than to impose our seemingly-sanctioned OCOC model.
I've said it before, if you focus on the church you get weirdness. If you focus on Jesus Christ you get the church. "We see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory..." That's it. There's nothing else. Either you see Jesus or you don't. Adding other conceptual layers doesn't add clarity but veils.
I know, I know, "Christ and the Church, Christ and the Church, Christ and the Church" the mantra begins, but I still reply that the Church only sees Christ. If the Church sees the Church she becomes the Mystery Harlot, just like that - pouf! Don't do it. Look at Jesus.
The Church is a mirror you don't want to look into. Just gather with those who look at Jesus. The rest of it will follow. He said so. Can you plumb the depths of Jesus? Can you chase him to the end? There is nothing else. All reality flows out of him.