What is the structure of the assembly?

Cal · 07-20-2012, 11:02 AM

Someone might correct me, but I don't see anything in the NT about determining whether a certain gathering of Christians is "a true church" or not. The NT just assumes we are all part of the Church and that we will gather together. The NT refers to some of those gatherings as "churches." It refers to elders, deacons and pastors, etc., taking leadership roles. But it doesn't give us much else to go on.

The LRC gave us this idea of determining whether a particular assembly was a church or not, by certain specific and questionable criteria. But the NT doesn't tell us to be so discerning. It identifies false believers, but not false churches. There is no such concept of a false church in the NT as far as I can tell.

Even the idea that a sectarian group is not a church is something not so clear in the NT. We were trained to think "that's not a church, but rather a sect." But does the NT teach this idea? Not that I can tell. This thought of needing to decide which groups are churches and which aren't seems artificial. And in the case of the LRC it was clearly a pretext to claiming church-hood only for themselves.

07-20-2012, 11:02 AM	#15
Cal Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: USA Posts: 4,333	Re: What is the structure of the assembly? Someone might correct me, but I don't see anything in the NT about determining whether a certain gathering of Christians is "a true church" or not. The NT just assumes we are all part of the Church and that we will gather together. The NT refers to some of those gatherings as "churches." It refers to elders, deacons and pastors, etc., taking leadership roles. But it doesn't give us much else to go on. The LRC gave us this idea of determining whether a particular assembly was a church or not, by certain specific and questionable criteria. But the NT doesn't tell us to be so discerning. It identifies false believers, but not false churches. There is no such concept of a false church in the NT as far as I can tell. Even the idea that a sectarian group is not a church is something not so clear in the NT. We were trained to think "that's not a church, but rather a sect." But does the NT teach this idea? Not that I can tell. This thought of needing to decide which groups are churches and which aren't seems artificial. And in the case of the LRC it was clearly a pretext to claiming church-hood only for themselves.