Why I am not a primitivist.

Those of you who’ve read MissionThink for a while know that I’m very sypathetic to the house church approach.  I think that as far as structures and models go, it is perhaps the best place to start.  So, from time to time I get emails from people or run into people who assume that I am a "primitivist." A primitivist is someone who believes that we ought to get back to doing church the way it was done in Acts. They read Acts 2 and 4 and see a decentralized house church movement and think that we ought to do house churches because it was what they did.  I disagree.

The early church "did" church a certain way for a number of reasons.  I think part of it was most certainly cultural.  The truth is, there weren’t lots of buildings that one could rent for large gatherings.  It makes complete sense to meet in homes during their day. 

However, I believe that they did church a certain way out of theological reasons as well.  They believed that "church" = "family." Kinship language is used frequently when expressing the reality of the Church.  Church is commonly refered to as the oikos (household), we are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Christ is the firstborn.  God is our abba father, etc. 

They also did church a certain way because they seemed to be of the impression that there was only one high priest (Jesus) and the rest of us are all priests.  There is no strict heirarchy of any sort in the New Testament.  Every form of leadership–EVERY–was decentralized.  There were plural elders, plural deacons, plural apostles, and none of these embodied a "lordly" sort of authority.  Instead, the authority was that of charism.  The Holy Spirit directed and led through the people, who were consider themeselves a temple of flesh.  And in such a scenario, some may be called to lead, and some may have a stronger hand in decision making, but we never see any one person vested with the authority to make determinitive decisions on behalf of an entire congregation. 

And so, the early church was familial, de-centralized, charismatic (in a manner of speaking), and while it has strong leadership, it was non-hierarchical.  I think that any approach to church that honors these things (among other things that I haven’t gone into) is as valid as a house church approach.  However, I can’t think of any general approach that can as easily embody these flavors as well as a house church model.  That is why Missio Dei is a network of house churches.  However, we deviate from conventional house church approaches in some ways (which is why some people call us a cell church, for example).  We have, at least for now, a central Sunday gathering, we have shared leadership, we have a number of centralized ministries, and we are open to doing "house church" in places other than houses. 

So while we can learn a great deal from the primitive church, we shouldn’t be enslaved to their expression.  We should feel free to innovate, as long as we are faithful to the most central ecclesiological convictions of the early church. 

for further reading . . .

• None Found