Needed: A New Way to Meet #1: History of Church Meetings – Why Do We Meet This Way?

The subject is “Needed: A New Way to Meet.” Now, that may sound really simple. It is not a simple subject. In fact, one reason I get so worked up is that I cannot believe we have been so utterly blind to the incredible needs we have in the business of meeting. I am going to propose things so radical that they cannot possibly be fulfilled on a large basis within our lifetime. In fact, most of what I have to say probably will never come about for most Christians as long as mankind shall live on this earth till the Lord comes. But frankly, I hope what I say today will be debated and become reality a hundred years from now. I am here to scalp the entire Christian community from the days of Constantine to right now.

Now, this is not theological; this is about the practice of the Christian faith. Theology is not involved. Theology has been plowed over and under and around and through for 17 centuries, whereas the matter of practice is virtually never touched. In my estimation, our problems do not lie in the theological; they lie in the practical and in the practice. You know, theologians will debate hairs and splitting of hairs from now until the Lord comes, and it’s not going to change much of anything. It’s going to satisfy their frontal robe, and that’s about the end of it. You and I have to sit out here and put up with Sunday morning, and that is one of the worst crosses ever asked of any man or woman to endure.

A few days ago, I was with a gentleman, a theologian who was pastor of the largest Moravian church in America. I had been in a church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that Sunday morning. I was with him on Monday. He asked me, “What did you think of our meeting?” I felt this big bear trap right in front of me. I said, “Well, honestly, I won’t pick on the Moravians. I think that Sunday morning church service is just about the worst thing that any Christian could ever be asked to endure.” Very relaxed, he said, “You know, what amazes me is not how few people go to church, but how many do.” I have to agree with him. Now that you know where I’m headed, and I hope to goodness…do you remember the little note that said, “This is not for the faint of heart”? This is not for the faint-hearted.

I’m going to start with a history of Christian meetings, but I’m not going to start with the first century. I want to come back to it at the end. The first thing I want to say about the history of people gathering is that no one ever thinks about it, and no one seems to care. I care. I want to know how we got into this gosh-awful mess. How could anything come to where we are today in the way of Christian gatherings, in light of the New Testament? In fact, the question that will fascinate me as long as I live is how the human mind can find modern-day Christianity in the New Testament.

We can bang on that Bible now and forever, world without end, and thump it, and say we’ve got to be New Testament, and turn around and build church buildings and seminaries and ordain ministers and call them pastors, and there ain’t none of that in the New Testament.

Well, you’ve got to go back to the period just before Constantine. Now, that’s about 323, so let’s talk about 300 years after Pentecost, and we’ll be pretty accurate. There was a tremendous persecution going on in the Christian faith, and it had, like other persecutions in the past, decimated leadership. We tend… have you ever heard the law of all food in your living room, in your kitchen, tends to become the same temperature as the room itself? Have you heard that law? I don’t know what that’s called, but it explains why your food doesn’t get cold or hot; it just gets room temperature. We all tend to become what our surroundings are, unless strong, powerful forces push back. The Christian church had lost its apostles, and in losing its apostles, the madman, if you please, it had lost its resistance to that which was around it.

Now, it had lost its leadership; it was very vulnerable; it was being persecuted, and a new emperor took over, and his name was Constantine, and he professed Christianity, and he protected the ecclesia, the gatherings, the churches. What happened from the time of Constantine to 500 A.D. should take someone’s entire life and write a book about it, because none of us can ever explain how anything moved so fast, so dramatically, from where it was in, say, 290 A.D., to where it was by 450 A.D. How many years would that be? Okay, around a hundred years, but I, for this hour, and I’ve studied this about as much as sources will let us, there’s just no explanation of how the church moved that rapidly from something very close to being pure to something outright pagan as the church became during those hundred and fifty years. I personally hold that the church had maintained its purity pretty much up to about 290 A.D. and was in fair shape even when Constantine took over. Her problem was that she didn’t know she was in good shape. She was so persecuted that she embraced Constantine when he came along.

Let me try to explain to you what’s going on. You have a Christian faith surrounded by not a religion, but a culture and a mentality of paganism. That’s far more important than belief. Culture will always win out over belief. The matrix, that which surrounds you, the womb, the matrix, will greatly influence you and me. We are Americans, and because we’re Americans, our Christian faith tends to be an enterprise more than it is anything else. Did you understand that? I trust you did. For Europeans, it is a tradition more than anything else.

Well, try to imagine the clergy beginning to emerge out of all the simple elders of the churches. Money from the coffers of the Roman Empire is being sent to these churches, and Constantine and his sons have certain standards for how the money must be received. Constantine has a pagan mind. He understands that a department of religion receives money and has priests. That’s where he’s coming from. Pagan priests dispensing money out of temples. The priests have costumes.

Now that’s where he’s coming from. Can you imagine what must have developed in the Christian church? Central authority, dispensing money to build buildings, because they’re used to buildings. The Christian faith, up until that time, was the only religion in history that had no special buildings to meet in, the first and only religion to never have ritual or a clergy. Now it faces the mind of the pagan: the priest, the temple. It doesn’t take long, especially for the gentleman who is the head elder and is now being called a bishop, before he distinguishes between the word “presbyterial” and the word “bishop.” There should have been no distinction whatsoever. They grab hold of this distinction in Scripture, and they begin to have a “bishop over.”

Now, I don’t know if you realize that there are 70 senators in the Roman Senate. Do you know that? Do you know then that there are 70 bishops appointed for the church, and they later become cardinals? You do not know, for instance, that a proconsul or a governor rules a province, one of the two, depending on whether he takes his orders from the emperor or the senate. But each province is divided into, for ruling, for purposes of government, are divided into, and I bet you no one can fill in this blank. Do you know what word I’m about to say? I’m talking pagan Romanism. Roman government. Dioceses. Now the Christian faith takes the provinces, appoints those who distribute funds, and in each province, they accept the same diocesan boundaries. That has become part of our world.