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Rethinking Church, part seven
Yesterday, we thought about the overall purpose of church gatherings. You could summarise it with one word — ‘edification’: when the church gets together, it should be for the purpose of helping one another grow in Christ. In a sense, it is simply the outworking of our love for one another.
However, that doesn’t help very much with the question of what a church gathering should look like in practice. Now that we’ve established the ground work, I think we are finally in a position to be able to outline on a practical level what a church gathering should or should not look like.
The New Testament doesn’t specify exactly what a church gathering should look like in details, but there are a few general points which will help us get an idea. Let’s make this interesting by posing a few quickfire questions about church gatherings.
Quickfire questions
Where?
As we discussed in part four, the early church routinely met in people’s own homes. This seemed to be the case for about the first two hundred years of the church (the earliest known church building discovered dates from around 240AD). As I said back then, it’s not wrong to have purpose-built buildings, but I think it has encouraged us into thinking about church in institutional terms rather than as the household of God.
The fact that we’ve got to the point where people view a church meeting in someone’s home with suspicion makes me think something must have gone wrong somewhere.
When?
When should meetings take place? Most churches will have their main meeting on a Sunday — but is this Biblically mandated?
The first thing to say is that Sundays are not the new Sabbath day. I explained my reasons for saying this in this episode of the Ten Commandments course about the Sabbath:
The apostle Paul said:
One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Romans 14:51
It seems to me that the New Testament abrogates the need for Christians to observe any particular day as a ‘sacred’ day. Every day should be equally sacred to God — it’s like ‘worship’ or ‘service’: we should be doing these things all the time, with our whole lives. There is no day which is more or less sacred to God — it ALL belongs to him.
The apostle John does mention the “Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), which most likely refers to the first day of the week — the day of Jesus’ resurrection. But I can only find one reference in the rest of the New Testament to the church meeting on that day (“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread”, Acts 20:7), which is far from a command or even a general pattern. Acts 2:46 says the church met “every day in the temple courts,” while breaking bread in their homes together.
In summary, the New Testament does not prescribe that the church needs to meet on any given day. It seems to me that the earliest church met at every opportunity, rather than restricting it to one day a week! But I believe that God has left the door open for churches to meet at any time of the week, rather than Sundays. At the very least, I think we need to get out of the “Sunday = church” mentality and start thinking about church every day, even if there is no gathering.
How many?
This is where we need to do a little detective work. How many people are needed to constitute a church gathering? Jesus said: “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). The smallest possible church gathering is, therefore, the smallest possible gathering — two or three. Size doesn’t matter.
This has certainly been a live issue for our own church, where some days our church gatherings have only been myself, my wife and children! It’s one thing to agree with Matthew 18:20 in principle, and another thing to live it out. But, we have found it to be true: it’s not about how many people there are, it is about what goes on in Jesus’ name.
However, another aspect of this from the New Testament is that there doesn’t seem to have been the same division among churches as there is today. For example, Paul was able to write to “the church of God in Corinth” (1 Corinthians 1:2). Corinth in Roman times was a city of about 50,000 people (according to Wikipedia). If even 1% of the population were Christian, that would still mean a church of 500 people.2 That’s a far bigger number than could fit in your average home. And yet, the church still seemed to have an identity of its own as “the” church, even if it met in different people’s homes.
We can only speculate here, because we are not told exactly how this worked. I suggest that Christians in Corinth may have met regularly in each other’s homes, perhaps in overlapping networks. That is, there were identifiable groups of Christians, but some who ‘crossed over’ and who were able to keep others informed about other parts of the church. Perhaps there were occasional times when they would have been able to come together all together as one church, although I think the ‘bread and butter’ of it would have been through informal networks of Christians sharing and meeting one another on a regular basis.
Paul speaks of the church “coming together” for the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:18. Gordon Fee provides some helpful context:
First, since the church gathered for such meals in the homes of the rich, most likely the host was also the patron of the meal. Second, archaeology has shown rather conclusively that the dining room (the triclinium) in such homes would scarcely accommodate many guests; [a footnote says that there would be room for about 9-12 guests at the table] the majority therefore would eat in the atrium (the somewhat larger entry “courtyard”), which would still seat only about 30 to 50 guests on average.3
Again, we can only speculate as to what exactly was going on, but perhaps wealthy Christian patrons would invite the church for a meal. It’s impossible to say how often this happened, whether it was every week, every month, or on an occasional basis. Perhaps it would be better to explore this next time, as I want to do a post specifically looking at the Lord’s Supper.
In summary, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer to the question ‘how many?’ As long as there are two or more, it’s a gathering! There certainly were times when a greater number came together, although we don’t know many and how often. Practical constraints will likely dictate these things, as well as the date and time of the meetings. It’s a far cry from the typical church model today of, “everyone meets in one building every Sunday morning.” But, significantly, this doesn’t mean dividing up the body: it simply means that one church meets in a lot of different homes or other locations.
What?
What should the church do when it gathers together? Once again, the New Testament is frustratingly hard to pin down. The classic verse which describes the priorities of the early church is Acts 2:42:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Which gives a ‘birds-eye view’ of what the early church thought was important:
The apostolic teaching (the Scriptures)
Fellowship [koinonia], also translated ‘partnership’ — in other words, close relationships and everything that results from that
Breaking of bread. I remember preaching on this passage and being surprised to find that this doesn’t necessarily refer to the Lord’s Supper, but simply ‘table fellowship’ — that is, eating together. (Perhaps the two things are one and the same? We’ll come onto this next time.)
Prayer. Although this should go without saying, it’s impossible to have any of this without prayer — we need to depend on the Lord every day for everything, both individually and corporately.
Although this doesn’t spell out exactly what a church gathering should look like, it would be fair to say that church gatherings should be geared towards those goals (growing in apostolic teaching, an expression of fellowship, and depending on the Lord in prayer).
So, what about the specifics of meetings? Yesterday I referred to 1 Corinthians 14, which does give some indication of what Paul desired:
What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up … Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said … But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
1 Corinthians 14:26-27, 30, 40
One of the things which strikes you when you read 1 Corinthians is that the church in Corinth was not in a healthy place. There were all sorts of problems in the church, including a man sleeping with his father’s wife (1 Corinthians 5:1). Paul was seeking to impose order on a church who were very keen on spirituality but were less keen on holiness (some of them at least — could describe many churches today!) So I’m not sure whether Paul is saying ‘this is what I want every church gathering to be like’, or ‘this is what I want your gatherings to be like.’ It is clear that order rather than chaos is the goal, and — as I said last time — edification is the key. That much is certainly intended to be universal.
All the things he mentions are things you might typically find in a service today, e.g. hymns / songs; a “word of instruction” (i.e. teaching from the Bible or a sermon); a revelation or a tongue (which tends to only be practised in charismatic circles, although I wonder if prayer would be included under this heading).
For me, the biggest difference between what Paul describes and the way things typically are today is the expectation that everyone has something to contribute. As I said last time, most church services today are very much led from the front: those who go to church sit there and passively consume the service. It seems that this is not the way that the early church would have done things. An ‘everybody has something to contribute’ mindset goes hand-in-hand with an ‘everybody is expected to grow to maturity in Christ’ mindset. You can’t simply go to church and remain an anonymous face on a pew — you have to participate.
What does that actually look like in practice? Something I’ve introduced in our church over the last few weeks is a time of sharing. That is, we explicitly set some time aside for people to share what’s on their minds or hearts. Over the last few weeks, it’s struck me several times how crazy it is that most churches don’t do this!
Of course, if your gathering is only with 2-3 people, such as a personal Bible study, then it will by nature be more open to everyone contributing. Which strikes me as a real advantage of smaller groups — many people feel intimidated in bigger groups, but feel more confident to speak in a smaller group. I feel like this is a good thing and should be encouraged, rather than assuming every church gathering should have as many people as possible.
Summary
How do we conclude? As I said above, I think it’s striking that the New Testament really does not prescribe any set format for church gatherings. It seems that God has given us a large degree of freedom within the boundaries he sets out:
We should love one another and desire to build one another up.
We should be dedicated to learning from the Scriptures, and there should be people (pastors) who have a special responsibility for teaching. Our gatherings therefore should have a large focus on the Word.
We should be meeting regularly together as Christians. Not necessarily ALL meeting together each week, but meeting together as time and opportunity allow — especially sharing meals together in one another’s homes.
Everybody should feel able to (and, indeed, be expected to) contribute. That doesn’t mean we should all do the same thing, but we should all serve and build up one another.
Gatherings do not have to occur on any particular day or time, and they do not have to have more than 2-3 present. As long as the other purposes are fulfilled, it is enough.
It strikes me that having networks of people who come together in small groups to share fellowship, study the Bible, and pray, but only occasionally come together in bigger groups, may be more Biblical than the typical way churches go about things today. If your ordinary experience of church gatherings was meeting on a regular basis with 2-3 friends to study the Bible and pray for one another, maybe that would encourage real spiritual growth?
There was an elderly lady in our old church who used to take people under her wing and meet them each week for Bible studies — kind of like a spiritual mentor. I always admired her faith and her godliness, but now I’m wondering whether she had even more of the right idea than I knew at the time.
What if everyone in the church grew spiritually to the point that they became spiritual mentors to 2-3 other people, who would grow themselves and go on to mentor 2-3 other people… that strikes me as being the kind of thing Paul was talking about in 2 Timothy 2:2:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
Pass on the message, so that other people will pass it on…
I hope that this has at least given you some food for thought. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below. In the next part of the series I will look specifically at the Lord’s Supper — if you’d like to read that as well, please do make sure you are subscribed.
Footnotes
- See also: Colossians 2:16-17, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” ↩︎
- That could be a conservative estimate — according to Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost “about three thousand were added to their number that day” in Jerusalem, and then both Acts 2:47 and 5:14 speak of the Lord “adding to their number”. It seems that the early days of the church were times of extraordinary growth, like we have seen in various revivals throughout history. ↩︎
- From Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians (New International Commentary on the New Testament) ↩︎
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