Is a small group a church? Do you have to have a management structure to be a church? Is church just people without reference to a building?
Our denominational president, Franklin Pyles, has a blog with the following
One of the respondents asked for a fuller presentation of the Marks of the Church. Thomas Oden’s Systematic Theology, Life in the Spirit, Vol. 3, gives an excellent summary. The Reformed tradition identifies Word (true teaching), Sacrament (proper celebration of Lord’s Supper and Baptism), and Discipline. Earlier creeds identified the church by Unity (founded in Jesus Christ – 2 or 3 gathered in his name…), Holiness (set apart from the world), Catholicity (not bound to a particular place or time) and Apostolicity (grew out of and continues the teaching and ministry of the Apostles). Oden combines the two streams into a “consolidating thesis: That ekklesia in which the Word is rightly preached and sacraments rightly administered and discipline rightly ordered will be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”
This is very important because we have those who say that we should do mission first, that is, simply proclaim the gospel, and not worry at all about what comes out of it, i.e., the church. At first glance this may seem attractive. But in fact the church begins at Pentecost and it begins with the true preaching of the apostles, with baptism and the breaking of bread, with unity, for as the converts scattered they understood their continuing unity in the Holy Spirit, and with holiness.
This is the core. If we recapture it, then we can stop wasting ink telling each other that a church can be a church even if it meets in a cave or a garage and even if it uses a different format and on and on. Of course it can. But, it can’t be the church without the above marks. So I would beg you that when we talk about how the church needs to change etc. that we start here with the historic understanding of what is being talked about when we say “church.” From here the discussion has promise of being very fruitful.
Howdy Ron
Missed you at prayer retreat!
One of my leaders referenced this posting to me. It made me think about what I learned in China about the core of the church. Just what we read here, tradition and practice are important, but are to be subservient to the core. The church in China has it’s tradition and practice severly curtailed, it had been persecuted, repressed, watched, and promoted as something of which the general populace should suspicious. (hmmmmm does that ring familiar?). Yet in all this, the hunger of believers to exercise their faith in community with worship, Word and sacraments overcame the loss of their ‘structure’.
I checked out the source blog. The comments there were interesting too. I really identify with your post script. It is a struggle, a heart-breaking struggle, of ministry to those who attack/abandon the church as they wrestle with their own issues.
How often those issues -I think- really focus on holiness and the willingness to abandon oneself to Jesus Christ. Often described in terms of crisis, the crisis of sanctification.