Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
While I deeply appreciate your Biblical exegesis of "church" and "churches" I can't help, when stepping back and taking an objective look, at this notion that: "we've got to get the church back to its early pre-tainted-Acts days" it looks ever more Cargo Cultish. It's reverse engineering the church hoping to bring "the cargo," or in this case, God's blessings. But who said this is so? Where is it said in the Bible for us to do that today, in order to get Gods' blessings? Does God really care about the ground of the assembly? Wouldn't God care more about the assembly itself, regardless of what dirt they stood on? |
I agree. And the fact is we really don't know what church and church life was like back then, and we are kidding ourselves if we think we do. We can draw general principles from the Bible record, but we are foolish to try to recreate something of which we have so little genuine knowledge.
I generally get frustrated with people who say we need to do it like they did it "back then." A variation of this are those who report how great the church is "over there" in some other, usually less-privileged, country. It's always about how we don't stack up against someone who isn't here. Well, dang it, let them come here and do what they supposedly did "back then" or are doing "over there" and then we can talk.
All we can do is try to have the best Christian and church life right where we are. Comparing ourselves to other times, places and cultures is a wild goose chase.