The Final Stages of The Reformation or Ad Fontes (back to the sources) is underway. Covid was the first nail in the last coffin of Constantine’s errors, and the fear of shooters and attackers is the next nail. Lake Wood, the Church of Joel Osteen had a shooter, and on the news a Newcaster admitted they look for suspicious people in pews who they flag as potential threats. This is the end of the accused building, The Church was never meant to be in a building with everyone being strangers. The church was in homes, and everyone knew each other from market, from a baptism, or from when Paul or someone had preached. The point is you knew who was in the chair next to you, now Mega Church models and perpetual visitors make everyone strangers, so you have no clue who is a threat, when in the old model of houses churches you had a clue who was sitting in the pew of your brand new dinning room set.
The Church has to change. The old system of buildings is an Old Testament fallacy propped up by pre-Medieval to Medieval men. God does not dwell in the building, “However, the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands,” (Acts 7:48), he lives in us, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Our Protestant preachers keep clinging to the motar and stone, they refuse to finish the Spirit of Ad Fontes (Back go The Sources, The Scriptures) which tells us Jesus did not say build a building and ask people to come see a pastor and become disciples, He told us to go out into world and make disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19). There is no line about make a building and wait for disciples to show up there!
I think when the famous Notre Dame Cathedral burned down and all that survived was The Golden Cross on the altar, The Lord was telling us “The building is passing away, but not my Cross or ‘my words, they will never pass away.” (Matthew 24:35). The last part untouched by The Reformation is at last being dislodged and we can finally get back to how The Church was in Scripture, meeting in houses, and devoted to the apostle’s teaching, “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42 NLT).
Many will resist this change, because of money, but Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). We aren’t suppose to be numbers in a congregation who get collected like Pokemon to get tithes from, we are The Ecclesia, The Church and it is time to let go of the building. I am not willing to put my name on a Covid list like The Third Reich demanded lists of people’s names, and disclose my medical status, I am not willing to worry when I worship that someone will detonate a bomb or shoot because we have no idea who each other is, and I am not willing to assemble in buildings who stoke the egos of teachers who get six figure salaries to make sermons probably now with AI help, while their congregants suffer losing jobs, houses, cars, and health. Its time to go back to The Primitive Church, and get back to knowing each other in small groups. I will say I know of churches who have been adding house groups to their models, probably in preparation for the inevitable: with church attendance down, and churches folding and closing and even being turned into pubs/yoga studios in Europe, the only way we survive long term is to adopt the small group house church model. Amen.
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