Coronavirus and the Churches: Time to Pivot Again

At the end of March, hundreds of British churches switched overnight to running online Sunday services in response to the national lockdown imposed by the Government. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on churches was sudden and dramatic.

At the end of June, as the lockdown begins to gradually be lifted, has the time come for British churches to pivot again? Not this time back to congregational Sunday services - which remain banned under the terms of the emergency powers granted in the Coronavirus Act 2020 - but to much smaller expressions of church, meeting outdoors. With groups of six in England (or eight in Scotland) now being able to gather outdoors at a social distance, is it now time for churches to put their energies not into Zoom meetings but into multiple face-to-face gatherings in much smaller numbers?

Photo by Nandhu Kumar from Pexels

The case for a rapid pivot to smaller expressions of church could be made on several grounds:

• The people of God desperately need face-to-face fellowship. From the point of view of pastoral care alone, most Christians and church leaders would agree that it is desirable that we see each other in real life in order to enjoy fellowship. Where this has not been possible, we are grateful for tools of technology that can at least provide some measure of human contact. The ideal, however, remains a gathered church in person - the body of Christ in the flesh (so to speak). Where two or three gather in his name, Christ is present in the midst.

• The opportunity is safe and easy to implement. Just as creative minds were quickly able to apply practical solutions to running online Sunday services, we can now quickly move to weekly small gatherings of church members outdoors. These can take place in parks, gardens, on beaches and in the urban environment - anywhere outdoors where people will not be competing with traffic. We can limit the numbers and maintain social distance so that the gatherings are safe and comply with the law. A typical church of 100 members could expect to launch between 10 and 15 such groups next week. 

• Traditional church services may not be possible till 2021. Research is showing that indoor groups of people are high-risk for covid transmission. Activities such as singing and physical contact increase this risk further. Pubs and nightclubs are high-risk environments; church services are not far behind in terms of their capacity to spread the virus between members. The outbreak in Korea was initially centred around a church. In Germany, churches have been able to partly reopen but congregational singing is banned (!) Against this backdrop, are church leaders genuinely committed to running Zoom services for another 12 months or more? And if a vaccine is never found, what then? Do we have a plan for socially-distanced indoor church services that provide the level of fellowship that Christians need or want?

• Small groups at their best can be effective in disciple-making. In his compelling book John Wesley's Class Meeting: A Model for Making Disciples, Michael Henderson demonstrates the genius of the early Methodist movement in its ability to transform the lives of urban working class members who had been largely neglected by the established church. At the heart of this process was not only public preaching but a highly-developed ecosystem of close discipleship centred on the class meeting. It is fashionable in some middle-class churches to downplay the small group. The reality, however, is that there has never been a gospel-centred movement in modern British history that has made disciples of the urban poor as effectively as early Methodism. It is interesting that Wesley's class meetings, gathering weekly for fellowship, personal accountability and mutual instruction, were limited to six members each - the same number currently permitted to gather outdoors in England under current lockdown measures.  

• Small groups would benefit from input from equipping leadership. Just as the Jerusalem apostles taught 'publicly and from house to house', the small expressions of church that could start outdoors tomorrow should be accessible and accountable to those with gifts to teach, equip and serve the members. If there were no longer a need for church leaders to be planning, running and evaluating online services, could their time and energy not be better spent visiting a small group most days to support and give input? Again, in a church of 100 members, a full-time leadership team of two could realistically visit the 10 to 15 small groups almost every week if they wanted. The modern Wesleyian circuit rider already exists and is probably sitting in an office planning the online Sunday service. A pivot to a radical small group model would be possible, if there were a will to do it. 

• Small groups can sustain mission. I would not suggest that these groups of six to eight should try and replicate church services; nor should they be focused on the seeker. But, by nurturing the believers and providing fellowship and accountability, they can help to sustain Christians in their ongoing life as witnesses for Christ in their homes, families, streets and places of work. These opportunities are multiplying during the current pandemic.  There is no reason of course why those with the gifts to do so could not also start small groups for seekers that meet outdoors at a social distance. 

• The summer months provide a window of opportunity. Although June is looking a bit sketchy weather-wise in Britain, at least we are not yet facing the pandemic in January. By starting an outdoor small group ecosystem now - this week - churches can refine and learn best practice while it is still dry-ish. We can then also plan creatively for the autumn and beyond. Two principles that may help this process are time flexibility and creativity. As the weather turns, groups should plan to meet between rain showers or on dry-ish days, rather than being restricted to a rigid weekly time slot. This of course is easy to do with only six people. We can also learn from pubs which have responded to the ban on indoor smoking by implementing new ways of defining 'outdoors' through the legal and judicious use of gazebos and awnings.   

I'm ready to pivot. How about you? 

Food and the Culture of Hobbits: Tolkein on Fellowship and Warfare

“Bread, Surpassing the Savour of a Fair White Loaf to One Who Is Starving”: Food and the Culture of Hobbits : The Other Journal

You have got to read this article on the place of eating in Tolkein's writing.

It's the heart of fellowship.

Love it.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

A Pilgrim's Progress: A Few Thoughts on Sunday's Gathering

A Pilgrim's Progress: A Few Thoughts on Sunday's Gathering

Anyone want to do some of this?

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Why is church so dull? A psychotherapist diagnoses the Sunday ritual. - By Stephen W. Simpson - Patrol Magazine

Why is church so dull? A psychotherapist diagnoses the Sunday ritual. - By Stephen W. Simpson - Patrol Magazine

Painful honesty with a glimmer of hope for the future.

"As much as postmodern evangelicals bandy about the word “community,” our gatherings have changed very little. Stylistic alterations might add some hipster flair, but the focal point of the liturgical week remains theater. A dozen or so people perform for a few hundred that sit, stand, kneel, pray, and sing on command. We squeeze real community into the gaps, between events with a hierarchical structure."

"In the first century there was still teaching, prayer, and worship, but the early church was about community. Paul’s letters paint a picture of people living together and collectively figuring out what it meant to follow Christ. The authority of the leaders and teachers wasn’t a forgone conclusion. They were in dialogue with their congregations. Paul himself often had to defend his position of authority and many of his letters are part of an ongoing doctrinal debate. You get the sense, however, that even theological issues were somewhat secondary. The focus was a meal, not a class or a worship service. Some early Christians enjoyed the community meal so much that Paul had to tell them to tone it down because they were partying a little too hard."

"How can we expect our leaders to be authentic when theater is the center of our religious week? No one is drawn to such a job unless they enjoy power and attention."

"In my fifteen years as a psychotherapist, I have encountered few human systems so consistently dysfunctional as church staffs....When we rely on the talents and titillating vision of one man instead of the slow, silent life of community, it’s easy for people to get hurt."

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Transition Culture, Community and the Local Church

This article should be read by everyone concerned with communicating the gospel and planting churches in Britain.

Although written to explain the phenomenon of the Transition Movement (the grass roots environmental network that seeks to explore ways of enabling local communities to adapt to a post-oil environment) , author Jay Griffiths also provides an insightful description of urban life in C21 Britain - the culture many of us are called to minister into.

The article provides insight into one of the crucial "felt needs" (not to mention actual needs!) of modern society: the need for community.

Whatever else we think of the nature and practice of the local church, I'm sure that most of us would feel that fellowship ought to be one of its key components. My own view is that fellowship is also at the heart of how we communicate the good news: the medium becomes the message. We model what we speak - of God's redeeming love and the creation of a new humanity in Christ.

Invaluable reading as a discussion starter for those committed to seeing the local church engage effectively with the un-churched majority around it.

Among the many quotable insights from jay Griffith's article:

• Many people feel that individual action [on climate change] is too trivial to be effective but that they are unable to influence anything at a national, governmental level. They find themselves paralyzed between the apparent futility of the small-scale and impotence in the large-scale.

• At a government level, I find I’ve shrunk, smaller than the X on my ballot paper.

• We speak of economies of scale, and I would suggest that there are also moralities of scale.

• Community morality involves a sense of fellow-feeling, is attuned to the common good, far steadier than individual morality, far kinder than the State.

• The fact that they were trying out an idea without being able to predict the results has a vitality to it, an intellectually energetic quality, a profound liveliness.

• William Morris spoke of the gentle social-ism that he called fellowship: “Fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death.”

• Many people today experience a strange hollow in the psyche, a hole the size of a village.

• In this extreme isolation, we don’t interact except with the television and the computer. We’ve lost something, and we don’t know what it is, and we try to fill it with food and alcohol and shopping but it’s never filled—what we’ve lost is our connection to our community, our place, and nature.

• The colonial powers practiced the policy of “divide and rule” ... but in contemporary society there is a more insidious policy of “atomize and rule.” The world of mass media fragments real societies into solitary individuals, passive recipients of information.
  

• Although the French Revolution announced that it stood for three things, only two of these (Liberty and Equality) have survived in political parlance while the third, Fraternity, has been made to sound both quaint and unnecessary.

• We are ineluctably and gloriously social animals. We want fellowship.

• Celebrity culture is an opposite of community, informing us that these few nonsense-heads matter but that the rest of us do not. Insidiously, the television tells me I am no one. If I was Someone, I’d be on telly.

• Celebrity culture is both a cause and a consequence of the low self-esteem that mars so many people’s lives. So, the unacknowledged individual is manipulated into a jealousy of acknowledgment, which is why it is so telling that huge numbers of young people insist that when they grow up they want to be a celebrity.
  

• We all need acknowledgment (but not fame). We all need recognition (but not to be “spotted” out shopping). We all need to be known, we need our selves confirmed by others, fluidly, naturally. A sense of community has always provided these familiar, unshowy acts of ordinary recognition.

Comments, please.

Colin Crouch, Post Democracy and Grass Roots Church Movements

My guess is that when Colin Crouch, Chair of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, penned his short but absorbing book Post-democracy he was not anticipating that it would, in part, inspire thought about the nature of the Christian church.

When reading, however, I was struck by one paragraph that seemed to have a direct application to the idea of the church as a movement rather than an organisation.

Against the backdrop of the numerical decline in the manual working classes in Western societies and, as Crouch sees it, the related decline in mass concerted political action emanating from those social groups, he notes one movement that has bucked the trend of growing political passivity in recent years: namely, the rise of the feminist movement. Alongside the green movement, it has, says the author, "constituted the most important new instance of democratic politics at work" in recent decades.

The paragraph that struck me as having something to say (indirectly) about the church was as follows:

"Starting with small groups of intellectuals and extremists, it [feminism] spread to express itself in complex, rich and uncontrollable ways, but all rooted in the fundamental requirement of a great movement: the discovery of an unexpressed identity, leading to the definition of interests and the formation of formal and informal groups to give expression to these. As with all great movements, it took the existing political system by surprise and could not be easily manipulated. ... It is characteristic of a true major social movement that it takes a confusing and sometimes contradictory multiplicity of forms."

Those of us who have a longing to see a mass movement of Christian life which significantly effects the social and cultural landscape of our communities and nations, may wish to reflect on these ideas:

1. Mass Christian movements often start at the fringes and are easily dismissed or ridiculed in their early stages. While we look back with awe at, say, the Wesleyan movement of the C18, we do well to remember that in origin it was quirky and led by a small band of prayerful extremists.

2. A great movement requires the "discovery of an unexpressed identity". While we can rejoice wholeheartedly in the recovery across the Christian church in recent years of an appreciation of the grace of God in regard to the believer's righteous standing in Christ, his freedom from condemnation and law and the power of the new birth to deliver from slavery to sin, there is perhaps yet "more light" to be shed on the implications of this truth for our corporate life together. The discovery that, since I am in Christ, I am one with you if you are in Christ and that, when we meet together, Christ himself is present with us, no matter how few in number we are, is a truth whose power is, perhaps, waiting to be fully realised.

3. This discovery, that we the church have a shared identity and shared life waiting to be fully expressed beyond our current experience of church meetings and organised events could, according to Crouch's model, lead to the "defining of interests." Our interests as Christian believers include encouraging one another to grow in God's grace, caring deeply for one another and sharing our lives together in fellowship. Our interests include living holy lives for the glory of God.and seeking Christ's Kingdom in our lives, our families and in wider society . Our interests include a detachment from worldly priorities and a longing for the "appearing" of Christ at the end of the age when we shall be united with him forever. Our interests also include a desire to make Christ known to others by word and deed and to seek the advance of his kingdom throughout the nations.

4. The discovery of these interests could lead, in turn, to the formation of groups that give expression to them. Groups of believers who meet to pray, to feed on Christ through his word and through the sacrament of the Lord's supper, to share our lives together and to care for, teach and encourage one another. Groups where we learn from God's word and where true discipleship takes place which shapes everything about us. Groups which non-believers attend and in which they witness supernatural occurrences as the Spirit of Christ distributes gifts and manifestations to build up the members. Such groups might vary in size, in time and frequency of gathering and in numerous other secondary matters. I know what you're thinking - it sounds bit like the church we read of in Acts.

5. Such a movement could take existing systems by surprise. A system that has for so long been leader-centric could find that anyone and everyone is hosting and starting groups without asking for permission. We could find that, just as unnamed believers fleeing persecution first took the gospel to Antioch and into the Gentile world (see Acts 11), we could today see ordinary believers who have regular full-time jobs in offices, schools or factories breaking into new people groups with the good news in our multi-cultural cities and that new churches are appearing who sing the praise of Jesus Christ in Somali, Arabic and Polish. Although we may think we would rejoice in these untidy developments, we may in reality find ourselves nervous about these uncontrolled events, in similar ways to the reaction of European Catholicism 500 years ago when the reformers promised to translate the Bible into the common languages and place it in the hands of ploughmen and weavers to read and obey as their conscience taught them.

6. The fact that such a movement cannot be manipulated indicates how different it is from other structures that may exist within a society. In particular, such a mass movement is in nature quite different from a corporation or a firm, particularly as they increasingly exist in the Anglo-American economies. Such firms, which tragically (to my mind) some churches have sought to imitate, have a product or products, streamlined delivery and marketing systems, multiple layers of managers and highly powerful senior executives, the CEO being at the top of the organisation. All of which can make them efficient but also controlling.

Let me speak plainly.

I see a growing movement of believers developing outside of traditional church structures - and even outside of "new church" structures. Some of these believers are discouraged. Others are weak. And some, frankly, have significant gaps in their theology and practice. Most of them love the Lord Jesus but have fallen out of love with their previous experience of doing church. Many are longing for a way of being the church together that is highly relational, flexible and "in life".

I also think that those with gifts of leadership, teaching, pastoral care and apostleship would do well to serve these scattered believers with the word of God and with their gifts.

I'm reminded of the advice that Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones gave to the late Henry Tyler, a founding elder of what is now Church of Christ the King in Brighton. After finishing Bible college, Henry, who I knew personally, was considering taking on the pastorate of a Baptist church. Lloyd Jones urged Henry to "stay among the house churches" that were emerging in the 1970s and to teach them the word of God.

A similar phenomenon is emerging today. I hope that those outside this emerging movement who are leaders have the wisdom of Lloyd Jones as they look on and consider their response.

I have written a review of professor Crouch's book here.

Full of the Word - the Theory

When Paul exhorted the believers in Colossae to "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly", they may have understood this command slightly differently from the way it is sometimes thought of by Christians today.

Whereas modern believers are likely to hear in it a challenge to go and read our Bibles more regularly and more deeply, it is probable that the Colossian believers would have heard in Paul's words an encouragement to teach each other more carefully and to sing to God more thankfully.

The key is in reading the whole verse:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

Please note the phrases, "as you teach..." and "as you sing..." Paul wanted the word to dwell richly in the lives of these believers, firstly, as they taught each other. The focus here is not on private piety but on corporate practice. Paul apparently envisaged a way of being the church together in which members regularly and wisely taught and admonished each other - this activity producing a rich indwelling of Christ's word in members' lives.

The second way Paul envisaged the word of Christ dwelling richly was as these early Christians sang to God. The experience of each member teaching and exhorting each other was to be reinforced by the activity of corporate singing - which in context must imply that the songs of the early church were doctrinal in nature and reinforced gospel truth in the minds of those singing them.

Let's think about the key words in this verse:

Word of Christ - Most commentators agree that this phrase (which is used nowhere else in the new testament in this exact form) refers to the body of truth about Christ - who he is and what he has done, including Christ's own teaching and that of the apostles. This body of truth has been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the writings which we now know as the Bible, both old and new testaments. Calvin rightly concludes: The Scriptures must be read with this intention, that in them we find Christ.

Admonish - while "teaching" describes positively imparting spiritual principles to one another, admonishing means doing this with a warning. An example might be "do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery."

Wisdom - a recurrent term in the letter, Paul is keen that the believers' teaching and exhorting is done wisely. This means knowing what to say when, how to say it, in what spirit and with what application.

Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs - although commentators love discussing these terms, the reality is that they are not really defined in the new testament. A possible distinction between the three terms may be that a) psalms refers to the contents of the biblical book by the same name b) hymns may describe Christian songs used regularly among the churches (examples may include Phil 2:6-11 and 1 Tim 3:16 and c) spiritual songs may describe spontaneous songs which are contributed during a specific gathering of the church but which are not written down and used regularly.

Maybe.

In conclusion, whereas Paul is not denying the role of elders in teaching the word, his interest here is primarily on every member teaching and every member giving thanks. This would have been more natural in the churches he served, which tended to meet in homes and be of a certain size which encouraged a high degree of interaction and one-anothering.

The church of my dreams? Believers, who have previously been taught the word of Christ and had a foundation laid in their lives together, meeting together and speaking the truth wisely and specifically into one other's lives, in the context of singing with gratitude to God.

We could call this edification and it seemed to have been the staple diet of the early church's life.

Full of the Word - the Practice

A previous post looked at Paul's exhortation to the Colossians to "teach and admonish each other with all wisdom."

How does this work in practice?

Such a pattern of teaching will, I believe, tend to produce greater maturity than an intake of God's word which is only done individually or is received from a gifted teacher. Both these routes are important, of course, but one-another teaching and admonishing has several distinctive features that are unique in the economy of God:

• It is relational. As children, we are shaped by our families and in church new believers are to be nurtured in the family of God with relationships that resemble - even go beyond - those of a human extended family.
  

• It is holistic. Teaching and admonishing in this sense deals with our understanding of the gospel and its application to how we live. The same apostle who wrote Romans 1-8 also wrote Romans 9-16. Yet how often do you hear teaching in church about citizenship, gender, race, the ethics of food, how to live as a Christian at work, socializing and responding to economic inequality in the church and the world? I thought not. Yet all of these topics are addressed in Romans 9-16 and should be taught - both publicly and through one-another teaching and admonishing.

• It is practical. Such teaching can be modeled as well as talked about. Although it is possible for a preacher to illustrate spiritual truth from his own life, the close one-another style of teaching increases this aspect exponentially. We can "see" and "get" what is being taught (assuming those teaching are living consistently with it) because we can see it being worked out.

• It is flexible. A church meeting where members teach each other can adjust its content to the needs of the members - including those that arise in the context of the interactive discussion. Such teaching can also be done at any mutually convenient time. Shift workers are not excluded!

• It is interactive. This approach to teaching allows lots of room for questions and two-way discussion. This is healthy and reinforces the learning value of the teaching.

• It is universal. Everyone gets to teach and everyone receives teaching. This addresses the issue of passivity in church as well as allowing for much more dynamic growth personally and numerically as members (even new converts) develop the habit of sharing God's word with others. Essentially, anyone can do it. Elders and apostles are there to make sure things stay on track and of course have specific teaching gifts to discharge as well, but essentially a lot of the day-to-day work of the church is to be done by the rank and file members, equipped by those with leadership gifting.
  

Of course, all of this can be done around a meal and is most natural and effective in a smaller group, such as a household-style church.

Where Does the Money Go in Church - Part 2

We've seen that one of the ways money was used in the New Testament church was to provide the necessities of life for oneself and one's family.

Beyond this, early on in Acts, we see money being used to help other believers in the local church. The key passages are well known and both describe life in the Jerusalem church:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. (Acts 2:44-45)


All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:32-33)


Both passages begin with a description of a state of mind and finish with a description of certain activities that arose from that state.

In chapter two we are told by Luke that this group of believers "devoted themselves" to four things:

1) the apostles' doctrine
2) the fellowship
3) the breaking of bread
4) prayer

This devotion then found expression in a way of life in which "all the believers had everything in common" and in which they "gave to anyone as he had need."

Evangelical commentators have sometimes got their proverbial knickers in a twist over this passage. Prompted, perhaps, in the mid-20th century by a fear of communism, many of that century's commentaries go to considerable lengths to argue that this "common life" was extraordinary, experimental and non-binding on believers in every age.

Presumably, these helpful commentators would not take such a view of being devoted to the apostles' doctrine, but would see that as an excellent example to be followed by Christians today.

Actually, devotion to the four things that the Jerusalem believers were devoted to will tend to produce similar ways of thinking in believers of all ages.

Apostolic doctrine

• Apostolic doctrine was soteriological - focused on God's act of salvation in Christ - and tended to produce worship and thanksgiving.

• Apostolic doctrine was also eschatological - focusing on the coming of the Kingdom of God and the passing away of this present evil age - and tended to loosen ties to the things of this world.

• It was also communitarian - emphasizing God's plan to bring Jew and Gentile together into one new man in Christ - and tended to produce unity and equality

• Finally, this doctrine was ethical - love being the fulfillment of the law and the greatest command - and highlighted one's moral responsibility to one's fellow man

The fellowship

In a similar, but perhaps more direct way, the church's devotion to "the fellowship" was an obvious way in which their mind set was shaped with regard to the sharing of possessions.

Fellowship, at its most basic level, means "sharing" or "common-ness" , the word (koinonea) being the root of our English words common, community and communism. These early believer were, according to Luke, "devoted" to this practical idea of sharing/participating together/being community.

Sharing their possessions was a natural outworking of this devotion.

The breaking of bread

There is not a consensus among scholars as to the precise meaning of this phrase and, in particular, the extent to which it refers to the "Lord's Supper" of bread and wine.

The phrase is used by Paul in his Corinthian correspondence with reference to the remembrance of the death of Christ through the act of eating bread and drinking wine. I have also argued elsewhere in this blog that the early church did in fact share the bread and wine in the context of an actual meal with real food present. This was certainly the case when the original meal was eaten by the Lord and the disciples the night before his arrest.

What is clear is that the phrase "the breaking of bread" does refer to eating food together and that it was a practice that the Jerusalem church was devoted to.

Prayer

So much has been written and said about prayer in the early church that I feel there is little I could add to the wealth of understanding on the subject.

Perhaps there is just one perspective that may be relevant. It is that the devotion to prayer enjoyed by these believers was present in the context of community life - in fact, perhaps the most extraordinary and beautiful community life recorded in Scripture.

Perhaps you're different, but personally I find it more natural to pray (even for long periods of time and into the night) when I am living in community with brothers and sisters who are devoted to the apostles' doctrine, devoted to the shared life and devoted to eating together often and remembering the Lord's death and resurrection.

I would go so far as to say that were you and I to be living in such a community, prayer would flood out of us. The healthy peer-pressure would be irresistible!

This began as a post about sharing possessions. It is still about that, but as an expression of devoted lives.

Christians sometimes get very nervous about sharing possessions with those in need. Sometimes it's because we don't see it as the overflow of a life devoted to sharing the truth of the gospel, sharing food, sharing the Lord's supper and sharing prayer.

A Multi-Gifted Body

Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth gives us some unique insights into the reasons why the church met and the activities that took place when they did.

"When you come together...", writes the apostle, "everyone has a...." He then lists a sample of the different gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit's presence that members of the community might exercise.

Here is the starting point for answering the question, "Why meet?" The church in Corinth met in order to build itself up in God through (a) the sharing of its life together and (b) the exercise by its members of its God-given gifts as guided by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of all.

A shorter definition of this sentence might be to say that the reason the church gathered was for fellowship and edification.

A study of the word "worship" in the New Testament will reveal that it is never used as a word to describe the focus of the local church's meetings. (If you don't have a free online concordance, Bible Gateway is a good one to get you started.) That's not to say that the early church never sang praise or worship songs - far from it. But it appears that this was not the focus of their gatherings.

Perhaps more controversially, it's also difficult to argue that the primitive churches met in order to hear preaching. It's hard to write a sentence like that without appearing to endorse the anti-doctrinal elements that are rife in the "new church" or "emerging church" movements. For the record, I do not endorse this anti-doctrinal emphasis, believing it is dishonoring of God's word and that it also produces weak Christians. My point is simply that, while teaching played a prominent part in the meetings of the early churches, it is difficult to argue that this was the essential reason why they gathered.

Instead, Paul's letter paints a picture of a multi-membered body, each member filled with the Holy Spirit, coming together to share their common life in God and build up each other through using the gifts God had given them. In this sense, they were a charismatic church. In fact, the term is tautologous: there is no concept in the pages of the New Testament of any kind of church that did not function on the basis of the giftedness of its members.