The New Testament Church, We Already Have It
This past Sunday, I gave the sermon at my church in Tavistock, here is an excerpt.

"Within Christian circles, there is often a lot of attention paid to rebuilding the New Testament church. There are books you can read, and conferences you can attend on this idea. Most notably, our own spiritual ancestors, the early Anabaptists in the 16th Century Reformation, sought to return to that way of gathering as a church. They turned to the Bible and found a group of believers in Acts who shared their possessions with the poor, who took care of the sick and elderly among them, who persevered and grew despite Roman persecution, and who gathered as equals, no matter who they were. Over time, people have tried with varied success to emulate that model of church. Those are of course noble goals, in fact, equality, persisting through hardships, and helping those in need are the very embodiment of Christ’s teachings. However, when people talk to me about the New Testament church, I have to ask them, “Which one?”

The New Testament is full of lots of different churches, and most of them are far from the utopian ideal that we find in the first couple chapters of Acts. The churches in Rome, Corinth, Phillipi, etc., these are not perfect churches. Clearly, we should still strive to embody the type of Christian that we find in the beginning of Acts, but these other churches, like ours, weren’t perfect, and we can learn a lot from their mistakes."

   [ posted by William @ 12:06 PM ]