Posted on 12/08/2014 9:34:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Much more than a single article could be written detailing all the ways in which American evangelical Protestantism looks very different from the early church. Certainly not all of the developments in our external circumstances or internal practices have been for the worse.
But one key way in which American evangelicals have not been closely hewing to the faithful biblical example of our spiritual forefathers and foremothers is in the basic attitude and response we often have towards what to do about blatant unfaithfulness within the church itself.
People often romantically long for the purity of "the New Testament church." But in the New Testament I read, I see a church with some really serious problems.
In the Revelation to John, we see Jesus Christ not giving up on but still loving certain churches, calling them to Scriptural holiness, even when the Ephesian church had forsaken its first love, the church in Smyrna included people devoted to false teaching and sexual immorality, the church in Thyatira tolerated Satanic teaching and a woman leading others into sexual immorality, the church in Sardis was spiritually dead, and the church in Laodicea had not yet repented of being so infamously lukewarm.
Members of the church in Rome were harshly judging and being stumbling blocks for each other. The very first "reconciling congregation" in church history, which took an "open and affirming" stance towards sexual sin, was the one in Corinth, which also included members with a scandalously nasty habit of dragging each other to court. The Galatian church was being led to follow a false Gospel, and heard from Paul about his own experiences elsewhere with "false brothers" who "had infiltrated our ranks." To the Philippian church, Paul noted that some preachers of Christ were driven by insincere motives of selfish ambition and jealousy. The Colossian church was plagued by a heretical false teachings that mixed in elements from non-Christian belief systems and struck at the very heart of the Gospel. The Thessalonian church had its own struggles with practice, needing to be warned against sexual immorality and then having problems with sinful, mooching laziness. The churches in Crete, overseen by Titus, had within them a disruptive faction who were spreading false teaching, and who had become part of the church despite not even knowing God. The church folk who first received the epistle of James appear to have had an ugly habit of treating rich people better than poor people. Peter's second letter strongly warns against the inevitable problem of churches being infiltrated by dangerous false teachers. The recipients of John's epistles were apparently in churches in which people were evidently believing the claims of spirits and false prophets who were not from God, there had been the spread of false teachings so dangerous that they endangered Christians' eternal salvation, and there was even a corrupt man in a church leadership position who was slandering faithful Christians and abusing his power to put some faithful Christians out of the church. Finally, Jude's little epistle is worth taking a moment to read in its entirety. He was addressing a church into which false teachers had "secretly slipped in," people who "pervert[ed] the grace of our God into a license for immorality." Sound familiar?
I fear that for too many American Protestants, their first reaction if they heard of a church experiencing even one of these problems would be "if something like that was going on in my church, I would just leave and go to another church – even if that meant abandoning a faithful local congregation because of something happening in the wider denomination!"
This is a profoundly unbiblical mindset. The New Testament presents us with a number of responses to such church problems: Teaching that explicitly refutes false beliefs. Church discipline. Patient endurance. "Contending for the faith" – and note that when Jude gave that command, he was talking about fighting unfaithfulness within the church itself! Warning about the ultimate eternal consequences of persistent unfaithfulness. Waiting for eventual justice for enemies of the Gospel. Even rejoicing over some good preaching by very corrupt individuals!
But what I do not see in Scripture is this idea that when the false teachers have gained a small foothold in or even overwhelmed a local church, we have any right to just surrender everything to them, give them full, unchallenged leadership over the local flock, just run away and quit, and maybe try to rebuild everything from scratch somewhere down the road.
As long as God sustains our ministry, the Institute on Religion and Democracy is committed to contending for the faith once delivered, rather than surrendering the church to those who would hijack it for lesser agendas.
- John Lomperis is IRD's United Methodist Director. He earned his bachelor's degree in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago, and has an M.Div from Harvard University.
I would be very surprised to find that the UMC is still sending church planters to foreign lands. Mostly they send hydrologists and medical teams.
To me sounds like someone trying to stop the
blood flow of the Methodist Church after both arms,
both legs, and the head have been cut off...
oops...too little and too late....perhaps ???
Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
See post #13
Yes, there are indeed non-Catholic churches that aren't Protestant. They're known as Eastern Orthodox.
Any church that looks just like the “early church” is definitely NOT the true church, because Jesus said that the early church is like a mustard seed, the tiniest of all seeds, but that it would grow into a large tree—not resembling the seed at all.
So, what should it resemble?
Christ never accused the church in Smyrna of “false teaching” or “sexual immorality”.
A large tree with room in its branches for all the birds of the air. You know, spread all over the world, to practically every country. According to Jesus’ description, if you want to find his church, that’s what it should look like.
1 Thess 4:1-8 lays out when a church has rejected God. The UMC has definately rejected God.
because Jesus said that the early church is like a mustard seed, the tiniest of all seeds, but that it would grow into a large tree—not resembling the seed at all.
But one thing I think about is the fact that any sinner who wants can come into the Church, be baptized and pretty soon is helping to run the Church.
Not so in the early Church, the ones who wanted to become members actually sold what they had and laid the proceed s at the apostles feet, they give their entire life to the Church.
Paul cautioned Timothy about letting just any one become members in Timothy 5:9 to 15.
Our salvation depends on our faith in Christ but these writings suggest that it requires a little more to run the Church.
I agree....
There’s a certain point where fighting the false teachers is fruitless as ‘the congregation bends’ to their will....”itchy ears” do that.
My family members had that fight in Florida in their church.....it was an awful affair and caused much destruction. Once they get a foothold they will play nasty to gain the entire by whatever means is necessary.
Well said.
never happened..for 1,600 years ALL true Christians were Catholic.....period.
just 1 complete one...
they're still Catholic...
The Catholic church
RE: The Catholic church
WHY?
RE: ALL true Christians were Catholic.....period.
Sure, if by catholic, you mean this: “universal” as in “the universal church”.
It originally was applied to all Christians because true Christians are all part of the universal church in the way that we are all members of the Body of Christ. The Latin word is catholicus, and in Greek it is katholikos, from the Greek phrase meaning “on the whole, according to the whole or in general.”
If by that, yes, all true Christians are members of the catholic church ( not necessarily of the ROMAN persuasion ).
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