Author: Herb Drake
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Spiritual Gifts
Spiritual gifts are among the least understood subjects among believers, yet are one of the most important parts of church life. Paul’s writings are the main source of instruction regarding the gifts, and areprobably the best place to start is in 1 Corinthians Chapters 12 through 14. That these chapters be considered as a whole…
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Ordination
Does It Have Any Place in the Houses Church? The purpose of ordinations is to ensure that candidates for leadership positions in the church meet the expectations of the church calling them. Those include experience and theological training, and if the role includes preaching, the presentation of a sample sermon. Usually there is also an…
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The Chiasm
One of the hidden beauties withiin the Bible is the chiasm, which is a poetic structure that can be found in both the New and Old Testaments. The word comes from the shape of he Greeek letter chi, which resembles the western “X.” The left half of the chi, which resembles the mathematical symbol >,…
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Authority in the Church
When persecution against the House Churches eased early early in the 4th century under Constantine, Christians found ways to form larger assemblies, encouraged, no doubt, by Constantine’s aggressive church-building programs. It is not surprising that these larger assemblies formed hierarchies. This very human tendency is so common that one has to wonder why Moses needed…
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The Romans 8:28 Puzzle
Romans 8:28 has been translated many ways. This article invites you, the reader, to participate in putting the puzzle together. The puzzle pieces are those in the figure that have boxes above. (We need not look at the last half of the verse as it does not vary substantially from bible to bible.) So how…
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Hijacking the Church
The first to hijack Christianity was the Emperor Constantine, who used Christianity to unite the Roman Empire under his control. Carrying the Chi Rho symbol, the first two letters of “Christ” in Greek, his soldiers prevailed against Maxentiius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge of 312 AD. Constantine invited the “bishops” of the day…
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Separation of Church and State
While house church theology and the American political left may disagree on a long list of issues, they are in lock step on the question of the separation of church and state–but for completely different reasons. One might look at separation in a number of ways. We Christians are told that we must separate from…
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Home Church Confessions
One can’t understand the history of the home church without understanding the confessions that they wrote to guide their lives. A great many of these have survived, each containing a detailed statement of faith that almost always references the Bible to justify each statement. Confessions differ from creeds in purpose and format. Creeds are a…
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The Living Room
So wrote Danish philosopher/theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) even before he started his series of essays against the Institutionial Church of his day that came to be called his “Attack on Christindom.”. Excerpts from some of those essays appear below. Regarding Establishment Christianity The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening…
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To Bind, to Loose
If you’ve studied Matthew’s gospel long enough, you will have encountered the words “bind””and “loose.” You may have wondered what was meant. In fact, it was not until relatively recently that scholars have found its origin is from rabbinical writings to indicate whether a behavior will be prohibited (bound) or permitted (loosed). Since Matthew’s is…