R.L. Faber

The Early Church The Church Founded By The Apostles www.rlfaber.com/earlychurch.html Version 1 - May, 25, 2024 R. L. Faber oneanotherchurch earlychurchmeeting othertrend relational church traditional church

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to discuss characteristics of the "early church." These include the "ekklesia" meeting, the one-another orientation, the meeting in homes, the elders, the gospel preaching to the nations, giving to the poor, etc. The purpose is to highlight the early church traditions that should be carried into our modern day and to speak about some early church aspects that we do not believe should be seen in the modern church.

Introduction

The Bible shows a way of doing church that is very different from what you and I are probably used to. ^{3.earlychurch} ^{4.earlychurch} Every church in the New Testament met in a home and there was no one man who preached sermons at the primary weekly meeting. Every meeting in the New Testament church included the Lord's Supper as a full meal to encourage fellowship and remind them of what Jesus had accomplished. The full meal of the Lord's Supper relates to the full meal of the Jewish Passover. The early church never met in disconnected assemblies but always thought of themselves as the church at the location (the city, town, village, etc). According to 1 Corinthians 14, only men spoke/shared. The men were required to take turns speaking and there was always an expectation of testing (evaluation). Anyone who spoke was to be evaluated (tested). No one was allowed to speak without being subject to evaluation. All evaluation was to be based on the Bible (if we filter though our modern times). The Bible is not clear on the role of the elder in this meeting, but we assume the elder was responsible to speak up if something was out of order. If other men did not speak up, an elder would be responsible to speak up if anything was clearly out of order. In the early church, there was special revelation from God. We assume God granted this in the early days but now expects us to follow the Apostles teaching as recorded in the Bible. God could theoretically give special revelation today, but we do not see this and so we conclude that God expects us to not look for it. We have the sufficient-for-life Bible well established and in our hands. We are calling this different way of doing church a "trend" based on a comment by D. A. Carson. He speaks about this "trend" as having good biblical evidence. He suggests that we should consider it. Even though we are not involved in this kind of church, we dream about it. We live it out as best we can, even as we attend a traditional church.

We have come to believe that the Bible encourages way of doing church that encourages a more one-another relational style than we are used to. We normally do not see the 1 Corinthians 14 style in churches today, even assuming no tongues and special revelations. If you have ever read the chapter of 1 Corinthians 14 and have removed the parts about tongues and revelations (things we do not think apply to the church today), you might notice what we are talking about. There is a "dynamic interplay, sharing, give and take"... a more relational style of church service than we are used to experiencing. We will call this the "Other Trend." This term is taken from a sentence in D. A. Carson's "Showing the Spirit." On page 136 (1987), he says,

"So far as our practices today are concerned, this means we should give more thought to developing in our contexts both trends found in biblical evidence."

What is he talking about?

Well, we came to these ideas long before reading this in D. A. Carson's famous book on 1 Corinthians 12-14. He just says it in a very short clear way and gives a good suggestion at the end. He begins a two-page section like this:

Let Schweizer set the stage: "It is completely foreign to the New Testament," he writes, "to split the Christian community into one speaker and a silent body of listeners."⁶⁶ The same point has been made by many more popular writers:⁶⁷ chapter 14 reflects a church service where there is a dynamic interplay, sharing, give and take-- not detailed liturgy climaxed by lengthy exposition delivered by one properly recognized authority.

We omit the rest of the page and following page, but we appreciate the section and recommend you read up on it or contact us for more information about this if you cannot get access to the book.

He ends with the helpful assessment that we are agreeable to:

"So far as our practices today are concerned, this means we should give more thought to developing in our contexts both trends found in biblical evidence." Page 136 - D.A. Carson - "Showing the Spirit" - Baker Books - 1987

The Complementarian Other Trend View

We will refer to the usual (common) church way as "traditional", but we are not trying to demean it by this term. It is just helpful to use terms. We will sometimes refer to "The Other Trend" as the "Relational" church, but that is not trying to make too much of the term since there is much relational activity in a traditional church meeting. We may need a separate article to develop a justification for terminology! But on to the main point... we want to clarify what we believe about our complementarian "Other Trend" views.

We agree with NTRF (or perhaps more so) that the Bible presents a very complementarian view of man/women roles in the church, particularly in the "worship service." Just like in the traditional church, there is a debate about complementarian or egalitarian views, so the same is true in the "other trend" perspective. We hold to the simple plain reading of the Bible that when it says the man should speak and the women should remain silent (at times), it means what it says. ^{2.complementarian}

Many egalitarian-oriented Christians will immediately react to this with disgust. But the same is true of our reaction. We react with disgust when we hear the egalitarian view being advanced because we think it is compromising God's Word and distorting the truth. But we have to calm down a little bit and be reminded that we do have friends who think differently than us, and who are also solid believers in Jesus. We believe the differences are opportunities to learn how to discuss and debate and when to hold off from those activities, to maintain the peace. Every discussion with a true Christian should remain with a desire to maintain a peaceful dialog. True Christians who cannot discuss issues are not showing the love of 1 Corinthians 13, John 1, etc. It is good to express your views and know why you believe what you believe. Don't just follow others. Study the Bible and find your support in the Bible. We should all be becoming experts in the Bible. Christians who read the Bible as their main text will also have to read other books to be relevant to the struggles and issues of our times. So we do read books... we do sometimes read books (or skim books) that others like. But we should mainly be looking for good books that we find to be faithful interpreters of the Bible. We should test all things... that means finding good interpreters and this will include finding weak points of the good interpreters.

So in summary, we may refer to some books within this "other trend", like Jon Zens, or "Robert Banks", but that does not mean we support their egalitarian views. No, we see a complementarian "other trend" as a good biblical interpretation. We would not need to use these terms, except we find all kinds of strange differences in how our modern interpretations deal with the Bible. If we just read our Bible, we cannot hide the fact that we have been "taught" every week in our churches for many years. We filter everything we read in our Bible. We don't just read the Bible in a clean slate context. Everything we read in the Bible gets filtered by our pre-conceived ideas. A new Christian learns the way. The pastors teach the way. It may be a while until you discover these ideas. You may have to read the bible for years and meditate for years to see how we have changed. It may be in plain English, but it can be hidden by the traditions we have developed over the years. We are not implying this kind of distortion among traditionalists, but by way of analogy, a Catholic person will naturally think their way is right. A Mormon will think their way is right. It is only when you ask questions and read the Bible with thoughtful discussion and dialog that one may notice blind spots. It is only when you hear the testing responses (as in 1 Cor 14 describes), that you might notice some spots where you might be following traditions that have been added. There are some ways that our modern church has been influenced by factors outside of the teaching of the Apostles. The natural question at this point is to discover if any of these traditions are “traditions of man” (as the Bible says) or if they are following the traditions of the Apostles (something we are encouraged to follow).

The Bible is our standard, but we have to interpret it carefully.

What Other Books Explain The Other Trend View?

First, we would say that "the other trend" is our view of what we think the Bible teaches. We are not trying to spin the Bible to support some alternative idea. Rather, we are trying to follow the Apostles and what they have said about church meetings. Some people believe there should be regular sermons in the worship service and others (like ourselves) see the Bible as teaching something different a bit different in 1 Cor 14. We are friendly toward the traditional church. But we want to see the Bible informing our "worship services." We want the Apostles to guide our church meetings. We would fully support most of the traditional evangelical church ways. We are regularly encouraged by attending traditional churches. Our friends go to traditional churches so we do too.

There are many books related to the "Other Trend." Some are supportive of our complementarian "other trend" views. We could add other words too... Like "reformed-complementarian-other-trend"... but that starts to get ridiculous. So we shorten it to the "other trend" since that is a confusion. But yes, we are also "reformed" in the sense that we believe God is sovereign. Yes, we believe in compatibilism, but that is getting off-topic. Our focus here is to show something important but not important like the Gospel. How the church orders itself and how worship services go is important just like many important things in life that affect you, but don't define you. You are a Christian because you believe in the Gospel. But as a Christian, you may have many different views.

So the "Other Trend" is just trying to follow the Bible when it encourages a one-another-oriented church. Jon Zens has a book titled, "58 to 0 - How Christ leads through the one anothers." Francis Chan has a book "Letters to The Church." Watchman Nee has a book called "The Normal Christian Church Life", "The Church and the Work I - Assembly Life", "The Church and The Work III - Church Affairs." NTRF has an older book called "Toward A House Church Theology." Robert Banks has a classic called "Paul's Idea of Community - The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting." Jon Zens has another book that may be slightly offensive, called "The Pastor Has No Clothes! - Moving from a clergy-centered church to a Christ-centered Ekkesia." The book may be a bit offensive, but so is a misleading teaching that distorts the role of the pastor. Another book by Beresford Job is called "Biblical Church - A challenge to unscriptural traditions and practice." A book that questions ordination that we first heard about in 9Marks interviews is by a Southern Baptist teacher John S. Hammet called "Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches." Another book by David C. Norrington is called "To Preach or Not To Preach? - The Church's Urgent Question." Another Jon Zens book is called "A Church Building Every 1/2 Mile." Then there is the famous "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola. Some of these books are more provocative than we are comfortable with. Some of these books are very egalitarian. We are more comfortable with the tone in D. A. Carson's Showing the Spirit. We are very comfortable with NTRF's teaching, though we may have a few differences (I'm not sure off hand). We are just saying there are quite a few books (we have just mentioned a few) and more that keep coming off the presses.

If the Bible is true and reveals something special in the authentic one another oriented way (As D.A. Carson describes), then there will be a stream of people reacting to the traditional church. You will only be able to stop this stream of ideas by controlling the platform and trying to ignore these ideas.

How to Proceed With Our Different Views?

We prefer an open discussion that is not afraid to research, as D. A. Carson has surely done. We do not think that D. A. Carson says it all right. We rather think he is a bit shy about discussing the topic for a book "on 1 Corinthians 12-14." But we also think there is a good reason for his hesitancy. It seems the topic of how the church should operate is a "silenced topic." D. A. Carson knows well that he will be somewhat rejected and dismissed if he says much more on the topic.

But D. A. Carson does offer wisdom and a way forward that is more open. He suggests that we accept both trends. In our current model, there is a quiet silencing of the other trend. There is a constant re-affirming of the traditional model. The topic is not explored except by those rare readers who do read these "popular writers." In the church I attend, there seems to be a complete ignorance and a suspicion of these "hidden books." One older man who left our church some years ago spoke about reading "Pagan Christianity", but that is the only person I recall. (And this is not a great book in our opinion) His awareness of these ideas was only pricked by this book, but he had not studied the topic well (in our opinion). This book has its distortions (It overstates many ideas). It is better to read more carefully and more extensively. I have heard that D. A. Carson reads quite a few books on a topic before he writes on a topic (like a hundred or so). The average Christian man, myself included, cannot cover that much material while holding a job. Nor should he. But it is the anti-study squelching of learning and reading that we are concerned about. If a top scholar reads and discusses like this... he is not acting strange. He is doing what every man should be doing. We live in an age of pretty good information that can help to counter the flood of distortions. But like the "hidden treasure" in Matthew 13:44, the "treasure" comes to us through biblical words that are massively filtered and interpreted by the teachers in our modern days.

We encourage each man to read their Bible and study it well. We encourage each man to read other good books related to the Bible to help counter the distortions of our modern age. We encourage each man to discuss any ideas that seem important with other godly men. We encourage each woman to get together with other godly women and let the older women teach the younger women. We encourage women to respect the way the Bible calls women to behave in how they learn the truth in the Bible. We encourage men to respect the Apostles and follow not only their teaching but also their traditions. ^1.traditions

The bottom line is that Christians have different views about how the church should operate. We encourage everyone to study the topic, find the best books, find the best ideas, discuss these ideas and always put God's Word as our guide for how we live.

FOOTNOTES

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Holding to The Traditions of the Apostles

NTRF says this well,

1 Corinthians 11–14 constitutes a four-chapter section on church practice. In this passage, Paul revealed his attitude about following his ecclesiological traditions: "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you" (1Co 11:2). He praised the church at Corinth for holding to his traditions.

timeless-apostolic-traditions

Original NTRF ideas from 1999

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Complementarian Views

On the topic of complementarian vs egalitarian we actually would disagree with some of our favorite Bible scholar friends like D.A. Carson and Douglass Moo in favor of John MacArthur (and others) who hold to the plain reading of scripture (in a complementarian way of understanding).

There is much more we could add to this footnote. But to keep it simple we assume you are familiar with the book by John Piper and Wayne Grudem on the topic. We also assume you can compare the Study Bible notes in John MacArthur's Study Bible and compare it with the egalitarian ESV Study Bible.

We may add more to this later... but this is really a separate topic, so we should really link to another topic article.

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The Early Church Ways

This footnote could be another article since the topic of the early church ways is a huge research area. For now we just give a few links and we will add to this as we have time.

This is one of our favorite websites about how to honor the apostles in how we do church. We appreciate Steve Atkerson, and have even stayed at his home once. We are thankful for his books, videos and articles. We appreciate his older material from 1998 and his newer material. He has changed focus a bit from a more house church oriented perspective to a ministry to encourage small churches how to improve things.

NTRF.org

We also really like this study by Tom Wadsworth on "worship." Tom has worked hard at trying to figure out what is wrong with our modern church "worship" and we strongly value what he has discovered. Others may have known some of these facts, but few are bold enough to stick to the implications of what the Bible is really saying.

Tom Wadsworth - Worship #1
Tom Wadsworth - Worship #2
Tom Wadsworth - Worship #3
Tom Wadsworth - Worship #4
Tom Wadsworth - Worship #6

We should add more interesting additional information here, but for now, we just have one more thing. The main purpose of this footnote is to get you to see the idea... You can look more on your own.

We did a Google search on March 2024 using these key words: "the early church one another interactive testing 1 Cor 14." We found this link below, with an interesting discussion on the 1 Cor 14 interactive meeting idea. The discussion is from 2008. This is a good example of the divergent mindset between the traditional and more straight-forward way of understanding the Bible on 1 Cor 14. One guy seems to want to keep "the traditions" no matter what the Bible is saying. The other guy is asking good questions and seems much closer to the truth. The one guy is hung up on traditions and how the church has become better over time (The modern pastoral role, sermons, etc). The "one guy" is called "Senior." He is holding on to traditions, with an interpretive filter that essentially nullifies much of what Scripture is saying. The other guy, "Freshman", is listening more closely to Scripture and is asking good questions. Unfortunately, we still see him as not going far enough in following Scripture. He still seems to be blinded by his interpretation of church and modern traditions. The discussion is good, and we would enjoy digging into the details of the discussion more, but that would have to be another article.

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/1cor-14-and-corporate-worship.38676/

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