Quote:
Originally Posted by Amanah
Hi RR, how do you envision the apostolic church, give an example of how you see it functioning if you would please.
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I like the house church model Aquila talks about.
Presently there is discussion in the "Aerialist" thread.
1) Believers met as churches on the first day of the week. However what day is this? Sunday is the last day of the week.
2) When believers came together as churches on the first day of the week they met in houses.
3)When they came together in people’s homes their corporate worship and sharing together was completely open and spontaneous with no one leading from the front. The early believers didn’t have anything that even approximated a ‘church service’.
4) As part of these proceedings they ate the Lord's Supper as a full meal; indeed, as their main meal of the day, commonly referring to it as the love-feast.
5) They understood each church to be an extended family unit (the idea of churches being institutions or organizations would have been totally alien to them), and practiced non-hierarchical plural male leadership that had arisen from within the church it would subsequently lead. This indigenous eldership (elder, pastor/ shepherd, bishop/overseer being synonymous terms in the New Testament) sought to lead consensually wherever possible, and was understood to be purely functional and not in any way positional.
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