Church is not a Meeting

I really do not care too much where a church meets. A house is okay, but under a tree is just as good, provided it is not raining. The place of meeting is actually irrelevant. We have to get beyond seeing the church as a meeting. A church that is just a meeting of people once or twice a week has missed the point.

A church is a group of people led by elders who have strong relationships with each other and who have balanced ministries. Each member of the church should have strong relationships with at least one of the elders and with several other church members.

A church consists of people in relationship with each other, serving God in the world together. This puts a constraint on the number of people that can belong to a church. Once a group gets beyond a certain size relationships become shallow and discipleship gets replaced by programmes. The solution is to send out a team of apostles to establish a new church consisting of a new a new group of people in relationship with each other.

If people have strong relationships with each other, they will want to meet together frequently. Relationships will lead to meetings. However, there is no guarantee that meetings will develop relationships.

I do not care where people are meeting, providing the believers are doing the “one another stuff”, people are being discipled to grow to maturity and elders are building strong relationships among the people.

Large meetings encourage passivity and dependence. The leaders of the meeting tend to become performers. They cannot relate to all the people who attend. The people who attend get into the habit of watching the leaders do “their stuff”, so they do not learn to do “the stuff” themselves. People do not learn to do the stuff, by watching the leaders perform. They learn by going with someone who knows how to do “the stuff” and helping them. When they have helped for a while, they have a go on their own stuff. That is how Jesus taught his disciples. Large meetings cannot achieve the results that Jesus method achieved.