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church in Jurong West vicinity 
City Harvest (Liz R.)
Sorry, City Harvest is not Traditional Church, Lolz...eom (Emmanuel)
The true City (Ivan)
Impressive (RTC)
What great feats of men to turn the wasteland into a holy masterpiece sanctuary of God! (Ivan)
Reasons??? (RTC)
I believe every building of a new church is a testimony of the members' faith in a great God (Ivan)
I can see that, but can you see this? (RTC)
In times like these (Ivan)
Living in the Old? (RTC)
The Old and the New (Ivan)
reply (RTC)
I am... (Ivan)
What about my questions? (RTC)
I try... (Ivan)
Place of worship???? (RTC)
I think... (Ivan)
It is heartening.... (Ivan)
Best of both worlds?? (RTC)
RTC: Return To Christ (Ivan)
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From your postings, you have presented several issues of church life and practices which appears to be Biblically sound and justified. ++What do you mean? CHURCH AUTHORITY By trying to question the church structure, in fact you are questioning the God-ordained authority. It is God who also set up secular authority for us to submit within God's framework of righteousness and justice. ++Firstly, I take it to mean that you believe that the hierarchy and institutionalism seen in today’s church is ordained by God. And therefore anyone who raises a hand to question the structure is actually questioning God. Now I ask you, can you give a solid biblical basis for what you believe? From where did you learn that God has ordained and set in place the hierarchy and institutionalism of the church? Secondly, I know that God has put secular authority in place as a tool of justice and that we are to submit to it, as far as it is consistent with God’s revelation. But am I questioning secular authority in this forum? Or are you equating church authority with secular/civil authority? What is it? CHURCH BUILDING You have denied the practical and call it unbiblical. You fail or refuse to see that a home is also a building and it remains so without family members living in it. ++It’s amazing how much misrepresentation you can do of your opponent’s position. Since when did I fail to admit that the home is a building? A home is a place of residence. Someone lives there. It is not owned by the church, but by the host whose house is being used. The house is not specially funded, not decorated, nor labeled church, nor seen as a sanctuary where you come to meet God. I am doing something that is as consistent with NT practices as it goes. What about you? I am speaking against church building as an edifice that is specially funded, constructed, and maintained to be a place of worship, something integral to the expression of church life today, something that is unheard of in the NT. You dare not say that it is outrightly wrong to have a time of corporate worship and celebration of victory in Jesus in a building dedicated for this purpose. ++Let me say outrightly then. It is unbiblical and inconsistent with the NT to have a building dedicated for the sole purpose of worshipping God. It is not wrong to worship God. Neither is it wrong to worship God in a building. But it is unbiblical practice to worship in a place called a church building. Maybe I should clarify what I mean. Those who meet as house churches do come together at times for some intended purposes. We can meet by the park or the beach if we choose to. If there’s someone who has free access to a big place where we can meet, we’ll do that. Barring that, we can rent a place for such a gathering. The expenses will be shared by everyone, or even someone may decide to foot the bill. But what we don’t do or advocate is to get people to pledge money to specially consecrate that place as the sanctuary. We are not against buildings per se. We are against the practice of specially funding, constructing and maintaining buildings for the sole purposes of regularly hosting hundreds of believers weekly for services that are void of mutual participation and fosters a “church is a place I go to” mentality. It siphons off large financial resources that could be channeled to biblical uses, and a church building can hardly qualify as a biblical asset! A church building may host 13,000 people in one seating well and give people a good time of singing pre-planned songs and hearing a well-crafted sermon. But when it comes down to mutual participation as that spoken by Paul in 1 Cor 14:26, it fails miserably. And when it is practical to incorporate a Theology School, Nursery, Tuition classes you label them as unbiblical or "vile" which may be in your thinking. ++I am not against seminaries, nurseries, or other such efforts. Seminaries have produced many fine godly people and I have enjoyed the fruits of their labour as I read their books. But it should be noted that many faithful men and women of God reached depths of Christ few have experienced without ever stepping into a theological seminary. Church leaders are born and bred from the soil of experiential church life, not made through a seminary stint. Seminaries are good for giving one academic knowledge, but they are not the training ground for church life. In fact, as hierarchical institutions themselves, they tend to breed institutional church life also. Moreover, seminaries have also served to cement some unbiblical notions, key of which is the clergy-laity distinction. You may want to carry it further to even question the use of "bread" element in Holy Communion practice, and that water baptism must be done in the Jordan river where the Lord Jesus was baptised, etc. How sad and how far back we have fallen! How religious one can be! ++Why should I carry it further as you allege? There is no biblical reason for me doing that. Perhaps if you can show me Scriptures that depict the believers in Acts always going to the Jordan river to be baptised, regardless of where they first heard the Gospel, then I may consider advocating that. As for Holy Communion, I do not question the use of bread, but I question the Holy Communion today as one that is more like a holy snack. The Lord’s Supper was always held in a context of an ordinary meal, where believers sat together to eat and fellowship. It was a time of joyous feasting and sharing, unlike today where it is nothing more than a I-can’t-wait-for-it-to-be-over-with-so-I-can-hear-the-sermon ritual with sombered-faces. UNDERSTANDING OF TERMINOLOGY I think that this can be attributed to wrong teaching or ignorance. We have been taught that there is no such thing as a part-time Christian (or call it laity) and leave all the church things to the clergy (fulltime). We are all fulltime Christians in the service and business of the Lord Jesus; we need to return to totally follow Christ and to deny or die to self. ++Yet the institutional church setting is the very thing that encourages the clergy and laity distinction! You cannot effectively teach the solution which itself is the problem! The environment itself breeds such dichotomy. All the right teaching will not change anything when you are on the wrong soil. You can correct all you want about clergy and laity but until you leave that environment, you will always be talking about it, but fall short of living it out. You don’t just change the language (though it is important), you have to start from a totally different ground. The clergy-laity distinction is written into the very core of the institution church itself. You can’t change one without the other. CONCLUSION I have only covered the key issues which are central in accepting the present church practices and experiencing church life corporately and in home cells. We can still experience heaven on earth when we accept and expand the Kingdom of God in our midst which brings down the denominational walls of division. We can achieve it by welcoming the King of kings and Lord of lords in our midst. We await the day when we can see the city whose buider and maker is God. ++You appear to have noted the problems (denominations, division, church life) but your solutions do not solve them at the root. You would only appear to have unity but it will only be holding hands over fences, fences that are dug deep over petty doctrines and distinct church practices which do not form the basis for accepting one another in Christ. Church life is not solved by opening up more time for testimonies or allowing another 10 minutes for “ministry time” in Sunday services when it is the Sunday service itself that inhibits church life. Cell groups have only limited impact when it is patterned like a mini-service, led by a designated leader, who decides beforehand the agenda. In many cell groups, the meetings are but an extension of the pastor’s personality and ministry, especially when the cell leader discusses the pastor’s sermon or reinforces the pastor’s vision for the church. If people are honest, most church life takes place outside of these settings, not in them. |
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On "house of God" by Ivan, 2002, Jan 03
No house of God by RTC, 2002, Jan 03
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