by John White

 

Dear Church,

A good friend who is in the construction industry mentioned to me the other day about a church construction project that he is working on. This particular one was going to cost $10,000,000. This made me think more about the "paradigm shift" that we will need to undergo as God restores New Testament church values.

From the beginning, churches met in homes. Graydon Snyder in his book ANTE PACEM: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine says, "The New Testament Church began as a small group house church (Col. 4:15) and it remained so until the middle or end of the third century." (p. 166) The idea of "the church building" really didn't get going until the early 300's with Constantine. (This is when government began to get involved with church.)

Why was this so? Was it because Chrisitians were too poor for the first 300 years to afford a church building? Perhaps this was true in some cases but we must remember that pagans living in the same cities always found ways to scrape together the finances for their temple building projects. Certainly Christians could have done the same if it had been a priority.

The real reason was that the early Christians understood the nature of church. They understood that church = family (Gal. 1:2, 6:10, 1 Pt 2:17, etc.) And as everyone knows, families gather in homes not special buildings. They are intentionally small in order to maintain family-like relationships.

As a house church grew, there was no thought of forming a building committee. It was understood that it was time to start another church in Joe and Sally's house a couple of blocks over. These house churches would come together to have larger celebrations from time to time but there was no consideration to building special buildings for these gatherings.

"What about the temple? Doesn't that provide the model for church building?" Glad you asked! The primary commentary on the temple in Jerusalem comes from Stephen in Acts 7:44 - 53. He says that God told the people to make the tabernacle (a temporary, mobile structure) but it was David (not God) who came up with the idea of the temple.

The principle is that "the Most High does not live in houses made by men". (Calling a church building "a house of God" was our idea, not His.) Stephen quotes from the Boss Himself (from Isaiah): "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool." He continues by asking three rhetorical questions:

"What kind of building will you build for me?" (Implied answer: "None! I don't need or want you to build a building for Me.")
"Where will my resting place be?" (Implied answer: "Not in your building. I don't need a resting place.")
"Has not my hand made all these things?" (Implied answer: "Of course it has. And so, I don't need you to make anything for Me. Certainly not a building to live in.")

(**WARNING** Be careful who you talk to about this "building stuff". It really makes people mad. Look what they did to Stephen.)

There is no Scripture that indicates that God has any value for a physical temple or temple-like buildings at the current time on this planet. Rather, when God says "temple" he is referring to believers gathered in the name of Jesus who meet in a home. ("Do you not know that you are God's temple?" 1 Cor. 3:16. Also, Eph. 2:21)

A part from the Scriptural principles, we can also make a practical observation. Never has any country in history had as many church buildings as we have (from store fronts to mega churches). And what has this accomplished in terms of impacting our society? Are we a more Godly people? Do we make disciples better? Are families stronger? Is morality higher? …..You tell me.

Gosh. If we didn't spend all that money on buildings, what would we spend it on?

John

PS. Just to rub it in, I wanted to share with you two lists.

List number one - All the references in the NT to Christians meeting in buildings designated as church buildings:

 

(short list, isn't it)

List number two - all the references in the NT to Christians meeting in homes in order to do church (some references are probable, some are clear):
Mt. 10:14;
Lk. 10:5;
Acts 2:2,
2:46,
5:42,
8:3,
10:22,
12:12,
16:15,
16:32,
16:40,
18:7,
20:20;
Rom. 16:5;
1 Cor 16:19;
Col. 4:15;
1 Tim. 5:13-14;
Phile 1:2;
2 Jn 1:10

John White
Denver, CO

http://www.dawnministries.org/globalministries/northamerica/johnwhite/leadership.htm#F1

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Reformation/ Revival, Church Structure, House to house community, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.