One Church - One City - Biblical?

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Jo S

I wasn't disagreeing with the notion that Christ's church needing recovery is a root of evil. I actually happen to believe it is.

Scripture says that God's Word will not return void. As such, there was never anything for us or for Christ to recover in the first place. His Church has already been established from the foundation of the world.

That's a valid way of looking at it. On the other hand, I don't think anyone would argue against the need of Reformation when it came along.

There's nothing wrong with saying we need improvement or a returning to the truth. In general, recovery means just that.

(There was also the added nuance that there was this pristine Church in the 1st century that did everything right and that way got lost and needs to be re-discovered or "recovered." But the myth of the ideal 1st century Church is just that, a myth. The Church has always had lack of clarity and agreement, and other problems.)

In even more general terms, recovery means salvation, which we all need.

So, from your perspective, yes, there is no need for recovery because the Lord never misplaced the Church to begin with. But from the practical standpoint of simply needing to discover the truth about the Church, there is some need of, for lack of a better term, "recovery."

The problem wasn't that the LR didn't have ideas that were in some sense valid, it was that often the senses in which they applied those ideas were invalid and self-serving. They would take valid concepts, like oneness, and twist them to aggrandize themselves and discredit everyone else. They did this with the ideas of recovery, authority, ministry, Body, and on and on. If you get snookered into accepting their definitions of these ideas then they have you. But their definitions are usually flawed.

So I don't think the idea of recovery is altogether terrible. But I think saying there is this one subset of the Church which is "the Recovery" is terrible. That is the Big Lie.