Dear BPCWA worshipper, Our theme for this year is “The Church of the Living God”. This is the theme that was covered earlier at our Chinese Retreat and will be the topic of our thematic messages during our English Family Church Camp starting today. While Google Maps may attribute a “church” to the name of a building (and rightly so for its purpose), we are not referring here to the mere physical building where the church gathers. We are somewhat familiar with Israel being a unique nation established by God as His witnesses. It was intended to be God’s national witness amongst the nations. However, when they rejected Christ, the Messiah, they were temporarily set aside. This ushered in the New Testament church age, which we are in today. Yet, the word “church” conjures up different ideas today and may be even more different in the years to come because of the trends. Hence, we must understand the church from a biblical perspective.

The universal and the visible church. In Chapter 25:1 & 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), it distinguishes between the “universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect” and the “visible Church”, which “consists of all those, throughout the world, that profess the true religion, and of their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation”. Since we cannot see hearts, we cannot “see” with certainty who is saved and part of the universal church. What we can see is the visible church, which is collectively the visible churchesthat uphold “true religion”. Having understood that the visible church is the collective body that God entrusts His work to, it follows that God achieves this through individual local churches in each location around the world.

Assembling under challenging circumstances. Since the church is God’s design, then that which is a church should follow what He says it should be. With today’s land and building prices, we do not say that a church is only a church if it gathers in a building of its own. Many churches (including BPCWA) held their first worship services in houses. At that point in time, BPCWA functioned more as a mission outreach arm of Calvary Pandan Bible-Presbyterian Church than as a stand-alone church. Many Christians in 1 Peter, as we have been studying, were certainly unable to even gather publicly to worship openly as we do today. In the sad case of a recent abduction that made news headlines, an elderly woman was missed when she failed to meet with a group of friends at a neighbour’s house to watch a virtual church service. Some believers may not have sound churches nearby, so they do the next best thing they can by assembling with other saints in nearby houses. Aside from new church startups, persecution, and inaccessibility to sound churches, do all Christian churches want to follow the typical church model we are traditionally used to?

Today’s “reformation” of churches. There is a growth in house churches today. A website states, “This isn’t a passing trend. . . It’s a reformation. A return to the ancient paths”. Another adds, “God is bringing about a transformation in his kingdom and church across the world. The 16th century saw a reformation of doctrine, our generation is living in a time of reformation of church structure – of simple churches and multiplying missional movements”. Their purpose is “To network and encourage the new ways of ‘being church’ that God is bringing about”. We have many greetings in the Bible to “the church in thy house” (Phm 1:2). A church is certainly a community of believers and must desire to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. While this sounds appealing, is God’s church merely a “missional community”? On the other hand, there is another house church movement based on the “‘Three Axis Model’, pioneered by Ps. Youngki Choi of Seoul Baptist Church”. The main axis consists of weeknight gatherings of house churches of 12 or fewer people meeting in homes. These meetings are about sharing life and building relationships around a meal. The second axis is all about shepherding shepherds through the ‘Living life Bible study’. These are small churches led entirely by unpaid, lay leaders called ‘shepherds’ who attend another regular mid-week gathering to be trained and equipped in their ministry. They claim to systematically teach foundational Christian theology in this axis. The third axis is a Sunday gathering of all these home churches to cross-pollinate and maintain the health that being in a larger, more diverse community brings. The interest is “not about gathering numbers on Sundays; it’s about making disciples. When we say discipleship, often we mean a pastor teaching a Bible study. That’s not what we believe discipleship is.” “Discipleship happens when you go and mingle with people’s lives.”

The above are but the tip of the iceberg of the changes to what “church” means. We have only seen 2 examples of such movements, and it is already scary enough to see the degeneration of what a biblical church is, as taught in the Scriptures, and what discipleship should be. There are many more such similar house church movements. These are, in reality, social communal gatherings with unregulated so-called Bible teachings by lay people who can teach whatever they choose to interpret from Scriptures. Do they sound like the ideal church model to you? Do these sound like your dream idea of a church? We are seeing other trends (besides house churches) that move away from the traditional institutional church model that Christianity has used for centuries, some claiming that they are going back to the model described in the book of Acts. Even established denominations are beginning to support such church structures because they are “popular”. The relational connection found in these newer movements is particularly appealing to those merely seeking to be part of a community. Such movements, often disdaining what they feel are hierarchical structures in most churches, do not intend to eventually change to function like the local churches we have been used to. They intend to break from it. But simply because they call themselves a “church”, even using Scriptures to justify returning to house churches, does that mean that they are functioning as God intends for a visible local church? Is it a matter of preference, or does God stipulate a framework for the visible churches that bear His Name as a Christian church? As WCF biblically states, the visible church is God’s chosen vehicle to advance “the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ” today. If so, then should we be concerned about the form that the visible church should take? We will answer this in next week’s pastoral.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor