Doctrine of Church

Can one be a Christian and never go to church?

Of course, we need to define “going to church.” The Scriptures are clear that attendance for the wrong reasons does not please God (Ps. 50, Amos 5:21-24, etc.). Many say they avoid church because they worship God alone, “in their own way.” Well, we certainly are not required to worship in the identical manner–besides, there is no one way described in the Bible anyway. But one can’t really be a Christian alone. Christianity is corporate from its very roots. It is absolutely essential for God’s children to learn to work and play together in the kingdom, as house church theology places the kingdom both here (in the church) and in the future (in heaven). So there can be no individual Christian, nor can there be a “radio” church Christian, nor even an “Internet” church Christian. Why? Because of the person-to-person relationship that is at the very heart of the doctrine of church.

When Jesus said he would be among “the two or three gathered together” (Mt. 18:20), it seems that he had the house church in mind. One can hide in a large church, going week after week and never really building a relationship with anyone. When people ask, “How are you?”, one responds with an automatic “Fine” no matter how big the hurt may be inside. This is not the way the church is supposed to behave, whether it be big or small. But it is easier to share burdens within a small fellowship and risk that a confidence might be abused is far less.

By the time of the Protestant Reformation, “church” had been in alliance with the state so long that it must have seemed like a government department. One would go through the state door to pay taxes or register the transfer of a deed, and they would go through the church door to register a birth or get married. Baptizing babies automatically adds them to the tax roles. Church decisions were often made by government councils and individual believers were told that their access to God was through a hierarchy of church officials.

Luther’s “priesthood of the believer” would allow Protestants to bypass church officials to have direct access to God. But the gathered people worshipping in their homes had Christ in their very midst (Mathew 18:20).

Various denominations, differ on when the church fell. Luther may have dated the fall in 607 with the abuses of Boniface III. House churches would date the fall in 313 when Constantine enacted the Edict of Milan, which made Christianity legal in Rome, freeing Christians to build facilities for large assemblies. The problem got worse in in 380 when Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of Rome. When this happened, the church became flooded with unregenerate people and hierarchies began to form with leaders who would “lord over” (Lk. 22:25) the flock.

Recovering the Fallen Church

The recovery of the fallen church took place in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525 with a group that came to be called “anabaptists.” They disagreed with the Zurich city counsel over several issues concerning the state church, especially the baptism of infants. The dispute eventually got to the point where the council ruled that these dissenters would receive a death penalty if they ever got caught meeting again.

On January 21, 1525 this group defied the Council. Meeting at the home of Felix Manz, they prayed and agreed to a confession of their faith. They then baptized each other with water by pouring. The result was explosive, as tens of thousands would copy them in underground churches all over the region. Authorities responded by executing multitudes. Protestant and Catholic governments, which had little else to agree upon, joined forces in this murderous response in 1529 at the Diet of Speyer. These men and women had already been baptized as infants by the state church, so their rebaptism was considered a rejection of that early tate church. This was construed as an act of anarchy that warranted execution. In the words of contemporary politics, they were separating church and state–an act that continued as late as the eighteenth century with the distastablishment process in the USA. But it is in this contentious series of events that we find the recovery of the fallen church. These tiny home churches:

• Wrote down what they believed, annotated with biblical references. These “confessions of faith” continue today whenever a church publishes a statement of “What we Believe.”:
• They met in homes, barns, and even in the woods, having noregard for church buildings.
• When they elected a leader, he would enforce the rules in the confession but would not interfere with the sole leadership of Christ over each individual.
• They refused to admit a “magistrate,” or other individual attached to the state.
• They understood their power to make decisions that would be honored in heaven by the power to “bind and loose“, also described as the “keys to heaven” (mt. 18:20).

The Power of the Goathered People

Matthew 18:20 promises that the gathered people have the power to “bind and loose.” They also have the “keys to heaven.” These two phrases mean the same thing. Binding and loosing are First Century rabbinic terms meaning that some particular practice or behavisor is “bound” if it is prohibited, or it is “loosed” if it is permitted. Jesus was saying that a group had the power to make decisioins that would be honored in heaven. That was giving them the “keys to heaven.” This is works because a properly constituted gathered people would be making decisdions that they already knew were in God’s willl thorough the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 15 there is an example of such an assembly, and we are told that the result of their meeting is “good with the Holy Spirit and with us”(Acts 15:28). The problem before this “Jerusalem Council” was whether gentiles should be allowed in the church. Jesus was not present in body as this was well after the crucifixion, so how could they ask their lorod? The account explains how they did exactly that through their power to bind and loose. This is the biblical basis of the house church doctrine of church: it is only when believers meet in the company of other believers, put aside their own agendas and ambitions, and open themselves to the Holy Spirit, that can they properly hear the voice of their king, the living Christ, as he now sits at the right hand of the Father and rules his Kingdom. Always persecuted by authority figures, the early house church people felt that the Holy Spirit spoke most clearly to the group. Because this corporate process is centered in a desire to be obedient to Christ, God honors the decisions made in this manner.

A Final Caveat