[Trapped]

I think one church one city is legit.

But let me explain.

I think the lesson of the majority of the references to the church being “the church in {city}” in the Bible is so we would get it hammered into our heads that all the believers in a city are the church in that city. LSM rolls that line out when it is needed to soften their hardline stance, and I fully believe it in the softened sense. All the believers in a city are the church in that city. All the believers in Seattle are the church in Seattle. All the believers in Paris are the church which is in Paris. Regardless of where they meet in the city, all the believers are the church there. That’s the oneness. They all have the common life of Christ and they are thus all the church. The city is a great choice to get this point across because a city forms the natural boundaries of the people who you will deal with and run into in your daily life. It’s difficult to get built up or close to anyone who is in another city. Anything smaller like a neighborhood or a street is limiting; anything larger isn’t practical according to typical daily life. A city seems to pretty steadily throughout history (okay, I’m speaking as non-historian here) represent the typical boundaries of the group of people you will interact with on a semi-regular basis.

But this truth is an objective truth. It is not a truth that disappears if there are multiple gatherings in a city. In other words, even if there are various assemblies, that doesn’t take away from the objective truth that they are all still the church. I do think this is a great concept that would do well to be spread. I may be wrong, but I think some Christians live according to this without having had the explicit thought, and that there is benefit to this truth being more widespread. It may illuminate someone who already lives that way, it may give someone an awareness and warmness towards his fellow brothers and sisters that he didn’t have before just because he never thought about it, or it may change people who formerly viewed other denominations negatively but who came to see that we are all part of the same Body. I think this teaching as stated thus far is good.

Someone else on this forum (Igzy maybe? Others too maybe) noted that there isn’t a whole lot of detail in the Bible about the church gatherings……but there is a lot about the individual’s responsibilities regarding his own behavior and his treatment of others. There is also nothing in the Bible that talks about the “practical expression of the church.” This, I believe, is one large area where the LC’s went wrong in this “doctrine”. They had to create this extra layer of specialness called “the practical expression” of the church to separate and uplift themselves. (Of course, I also believe this is a smokescreen for “you don’t read W. Lee”, but that’s a tangent). They often say, “okay, where is the practical expression of this?” But the Bible doesn’t talk about some “practical expression” that everyone else who is driving by on the street can point to. The practical expression of the church is not a group of people hidden away in a unmarked beige building sitting on gold chairs reading the words of two Chinese men. The practical expression of the church is in our living. We are the church. So the practical expression of the church is in how each of us lives, treats others, and takes care of others.

For all their trumpeting of the practical expression of the church, the LC’s as a system really miss the actual practical expression of it.

Okay. So all the believers in a city are the church in that city. The problem is, even if there was one entire massive unified church in New York City, the realities of the physical world would end up dictating that they all group up and meet in different assemblies. So for example, in a city of 1 million, let’s say there are 370,000 meeting Christians. (I googled how many Christians attend church in America, and the result was 37%. Let’s go with that for example’s sake). This would require four Astrodomes to accommodate one combined meeting of the church, and about 0.0001 of them could function in a 2-hour meeting. The eldership would have to consist of something like 8,000-10,000 elders. And the church would have to own a gigantic arena just to have the weekly elders’ meetings. Oh yeah, which means most elders couldn’t function or have input.

So the more probable thing would happen, which is that the saints would divide up into smaller groups based on location or common burden. And those elders would divide up into smaller groups based on location or common burden around the city too. (I just googled the average population of a U.S. city, and it said 20,000….not 1,000,000. Okay, 37% of 20,000 is 7,400 Christians. Which would need maybe 200 elders. The same thing would still happen but with less astrodomes.) So there would be small groups of elders caring for these smaller assemblies around the city. And in order for everyone to know where on earth to go, those assemblies would take on certain names that include information additional to the name of the city. In other words, over time, the “names” (de-name-inations as Evangelical used to love to say) are going to come in simply as a function of the realities of life. These names already come in to describe smaller assemblies of the local churches during the week. So I don’t see a difference between:

Monday lunch sisters’ gathering at the Smith’s
Jones’ home prayer meeting
Chang’s Friday night home meeting
District #1’s prophesying meeting
Northview Church in Gary, Indiana
Portland Point Community Assembly

Much to LCer’s horror, they might be terrified to realize that those prayer meeting and home meeting descriptions (required to have any chance of finding the location of the gathering) have THE NAME OF ANOTHER PERSON BESIDES THE LORD IN THEM. And yet they say it without batting an eye.

So whether we got names the way that actually happened, or whether we got names by trying to do it as I described and unavoidable real life came in, we have different names. The names just tell you where on earth to go to get to a gathering of believers and aren’t a cause of division unless those believers refuse to meet with other believers when called to do so. And it’s not the names that cause division. It’s the attitude of the people who meet there that does. Does this still happen today? Yeah. Is that a problem? Yeah. Are the LCs part of that problem? Yeah.

(It just hit me like a ton of bricks that the local church is so upside down that it calls meeting with “other” Christians DIVISIVE. Wrap your head around that for a second. The local churches CALL COMING TOGETHER WITH THEIR FELLOW BELIEVERS “DIVISION”. How on earth have I swallowed that one for so long?!?! If that doesn’t do you in, nothing will.)

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve said anything particularly new or groundbreaking (pun not intended), but I’ve been ruminating on it for a while and just had to put my thoughts all together in one place.

Trapped

P.S. Totally unrelated topic but my mind is jumping around …… I wonder if PSRP went by the wayside because the “S” part (study) made people actually study the points and look up the verses and realize that the verse references cited for different things didn’t actually match up with the “truth” being propagated?!