House church advocate sees historical derailment
___God put the church on a track to disciple the nations, but that train has been derailed by four deviations in Christian history, according to Wolfgang Simson.
___Simson is a German Christian and authority on the house church movement.
___The first problem was that Christianity "became a religion," he said. "Religion is what man makes out of God. ... Christianity is a way of life, a relationship."
___The core issue for a "religious person" is he's insecure about whether God hears him, Simson suggested. "Religion tries to cover this wound. Religion has basically tried to make us feel safe."
___For example, infant baptism is one of the inventions of religious people to make them feel safe, said Simson, who is Lutheran.
___Religion also embraces a top-down hierarchical structure, he said. Those at the top are separated from the so-called grassroots.
___But in Christianity, "there are no grassroots," he said. Christianity calls for believers to submit to one another. If someone does not submit, he puts himself above others and becomes No. 1.
___The pulpit, Simson said, is a divider in the church, separating the professional clergy from the rest of the body.
___The second deviation of the church came when "we moved out from the house churches to the church houses," he said, asserting that a church building is an "artificial place." The Roman Emperor Constantine "recreated a holy place" when he legitimized Christianity and moved the church into cathedrals.
___"It was a disaster," Simson said. "It gave us the edifice complex."
___Third, the church "moved from organic ways of fellowship to organized ways." Christians took the Jewish synagogue concept of worship, which God never approved, and brought its structured format into the church, Simson said. He called it a wedding between the synagogue and the cathedral.
___"I am not promoting the absence of organization," he said. "We need a minimum of organization for a maximum of organism."
___Church is not about organized meetings, Simson said. It is to share God and life with others, and "to share life needs time." That means to share in whatever way needed--spiritually, financially or whatever.
___"Most Christians are scared to death" by the sharing aspect of "koinonia" or community, Simson said. "Many of our programs are basically invented because we really don't know what to do with one another." Close fellowship, on the other hand, usually happens when people show their weaknesses.
___Fourth, Christianity was "baptized with a Greek spirit," and churches were divided into "professors" and their students.
___"It is time to change the system," Simson said. The church needs to "return to New Testament principles and dynamics of church." God must "turn the church upside down before he turns the country upside down" for Christ.
The Baptist Standard
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