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The book Help! The Sheep are Escaping by Selwyn R. Stevens is only 96 pages but it’s packed full of goodness. This would be a great book for anyone sitting on the fence about attending or even starting a relational gathering. The chapter discussing the definitions of “ekklesia” and “church” are very easy to understand. The excerpt below is from a section called New Testament Church: Meeting Together Manifesto.

1. We are the Church, People not Steeples.
   The church is not buildings. There is a growing, deep recognition that “We are the church. The English word “church” is from the Greek word “ekklesia” and means “the assembly,” “those gathered together.” It is not something one goes to or joins or has or does. We are the church! Many of God’s people are returning to this simple way of being the church, learning to just walk with God and enjoy Him!
2. Jesus is the Head of the Church; He is building it.
   The church has but one Head, Jesus. No person should interfere with His sovereign leadership of every believer and every gathering of believers. He is in charge, not us. He promised that wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, that He would be in our midst. We also need to yield to Him for results and not think it is by our cleverness, labor, wisdom, or creativity that the church will be built. Psalm 44 is wonderful meditation of our need of Him, His mercy, and His favor.
3. The Church gathers anywhere, typically in homes.
   The “church gathered” can happen any where and at any time – any where and any time two or three are gathered together in His Name (Matthew 18:20). The most common Biblical place of gathering is the homes of believers (Acts 2:1-2, 2:46, 5:42, 8:3, 10:24-27, 12:12, 16:40, 20:20, 28:30-31; Romans 16:3-5, 16:23; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; and Philemon 2). At times, the “whole church” comes together in one place 1 Cor 14:26. Today, most churches have dispensed with meeting regularly in homes, preferring anonymity over intimacy and responsibility.
4. The Church gathers for loving ministry one to another, not to be an audience.
   Churches make the mistake often of organizing around a few gifts (pastors, teachers) and even institutionalize them and make them above all other giftings and servants till they literally exclude every other function as less than legitimate “church.” When the church gathers, it is not to be an audience for lectures and entertainment, but rather it is to be a multi-gifted, all-as-ministers, functioning Body, where all (men and women) are free to fully participate under the Holy Spirit’s leading and anointing in ministering to one another (1 Peter 4:8-11; Ephesians 4:16; 1 Corinthians 12-14).

5. The Church has leading servants, not priests.
   All in the church are servants, it is the highest calling. Some are
   recognized for their faithfulness in serving and become leading
   servants. Scripture calls these Elders and Deacons. They are servants of servants. This leadership, submitted to Jesus, and to one another, is:
   a. Shared among several, rather than consolidated in one person (Acts 14:23, 15:6, 20:17; Titus 1:5, etc.).
   b. Raised up from within by the Holy Spirit, rather than brought in from the outside (Acts 14:23, 20:17; Titus 1:5, etc.).
   c. Serving, releasing, and coaching the members in their giftings and ministries to be a functioning Body; rather than to control, manipulate, and do all of the ministering themselves.
   d. Alongside the members- serving together, not above other members or between them and God.
6. The Church exists in locality, undivided by doctrinal or
   other differences.
   The church exists by locality, i.e., “the church which is at Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1). In your locality there is only one church – we need to begin to think, talk, and walk this important truth. We are members with all believers in our locality, and owe them our love and service. The church in the US has been splintered into almost 200 denominations and divisions by the focus on heads (knowledge and theology), not hearts.
7. The Church scatters to be light among the lost.
   Churches really get confused when they organize around the lost. Some even make that their whole focus (seeker-sensitive, or gospel message based, etc.). God calls us first and foremost to be, not to do. Church is not something we go to a few hours a week, it is something we are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As His servants at all times, we need to act in such a way as to bring Him honor. The highest recognition in the world is to have someone ask us a reason of the hope they see in us.

You can check out Selwyn’s website here. He has some great free material available here.

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The excerpt below is from the book The Yoke of Christ by Elton Trueblood published in 1958.

(Jesus) did not leave a book; He did not leave an army; He did not leave an organization, in the ordinary sense.  What He left, instead, was a little redemptive fellowship made up of extremely common people whose total impact was miraculous…It is hard for us to visualize what early Christianity was like.  Certainly, it was very different from the Christianity known to us today.  There were no fine buildings…There was no hierarchy; there were no theological seminaries; there were no Christian colleges; there were no Sunday Schools; there were no choirs.  Only small groups of believers-small fellowships.

In the beginning there wasn’t even a New Testament.  The New Testament itself was not so much a cause of these fellowships as a result of them.  Thus the first books of the New Testament were the letters written to the little fellowships partly because of their difficulties, dangers and temptations.  All that they had was the fellowship; nothing else; no standing; no prestige; no honor…The early Christians were not a people of standing, but they had a secret power among them, and the secret power resulted from the way in which they were members one of another…

Can you think of what it must have been like?  One little fellowship was meeting in a home in Philippi…mostly Christians gathered in homes…What occurred in the ancient civilization was the organic development of the fellowship but never a merely individual Christianity.  That would not have been able to survive.  The fellowship was the only thing that could win.  The early Christians came together to strengthen one another and to encourage one another in their humble gatherings such as are described in 1 Corinthians 14, and then they went out into their ministry in the Greco-Roman world…All of these parts (of the Empire) were touched because the fellowship itself had such intensity, such vitality, and such power…

If all the salt is washed out of (the fellowship), if all that is left is just the worldly emphasis of respectability and fine buildings, an ecclesiastical structure and conventional religion with the redemptive power gone, it isn’t partly good; it isn’t any good.  Christ is saying that mild religion, far from being of partial value, is of utterly no value…It is easy to go on with a system.  But Christ says it isn’t worth a thing.

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The full title of this book by Alan Kreider is “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”. This work, at a little over 300 pages, is extensively researched. Alan provides insight from documented sources on how a small group of Christ followers were able to impact the world. This book is not for the faint of heart but provides great perspective. Check out the excerpt below for a take on Evangelism.

Unlike many churches today, the third-century churches described by the Apostolic Tradition did not try to grow by making people feel welcome and included. Civic paganism did that. In contrast, the churches were hard to enter. They didn’t grow because of their cultural accessibility; they grew because they required commitment to an unpopular God who didn’t require people to perform cultic acts correctly but instead equipped them to live in a way that was richly unconventional.

The churches chose this approach for good reasons. The first was theological: they believed that the God whom they worshiped revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, an embodied human who at ultimate cost demonstrated the way to live, and that Jesus’s way was saving and life giving for individual humans and their communities. It was vital for the Christians to live in his way, unusual though it was, because they thought that it was true. The second reason was evangelistic: the churches’ primary witness was a product not of what Christians said but of how they lived. It was rooted in the assumption that the lives of Christians and their communities provided embodied evidence of the truth of their words. How could the Christians undercut this approach to mission? By admitting new people too quickly whose behavior compromised the Christians’ distinctive attractiveness.

What happened was this. Non-Christians and Christians worked together and lived near each other. They became friends. Non-Christians were at times attracted by the Christians and interested in exploring Christianity further. The Christians could not take them to Sunday worship services-these were off limits to people until they had been catechized and baptized. But the Christians could invite their friends to go with them early on a weekday to meet the church’s “teachers.” Would the teachers admit them to a process of study and habituation-lasting for some time-that would eventually lead to their admission to the community? Would they admit them as catechumens en route to baptism?

The non-Christian applicants went with their friends/sponsors to meet the church’s teachers. In this meeting, called the First Scrutiny, the teachers-at times clergy, at times laity-gave primary attention to the sponsors and asked them to “bear witness” about the candidates. The sponsors had to answer questions, not about what the candidates believed or (as in conventional associations) about whether they could pay hefty initiation fees (the churches required none), but about how the candidates lived. Why this concentration on how they were living? There were two reasons.

The first reason was the candidates’ teachability. The teachers wanted to know that the candidates were living in such a way that they were able “to hear the Word.” Can they appropriate what the teachers are teaching? According to the Apostolic Tradition, the church gave major attention to these questions. And for good reason. The teachers, like the early Christians generally, believed that the surest indication of what people thought was the way they lived, and they were convinced that the candidates’ behavior was the most reliable predictor of whether they would be able to learn the Christians’ habitus. The teachers, with the candidate standing by, pressed the sponsor about the candidate’s behavior in light of the church’s deep rejection of idolatry, adultery, and killing. Would the way the candidate has been living enable him or her to “hear the Word” (to master the church’s teaching with their bodies as well as their brains)? For example, actors who gave pagan theatrical performances-could they hear the Word in a community that vigorously repudiated polytheism? Gladiators who killed in the arena-could they hear the Word in a community that forbade the taking of life? Prostitutes-could they hear the Word in a community that emphasized chastity and continence? The Apostolic Tradition specifies that, in each case, these people needed to leave their professions if they were to be accepted as potential Christians; their professional commitments made it impossible for them to comprehend the Christians’ teaching.

In the case of certain other professions, however, it was somewhat different. The Apostolic Tradition asserts that their practitioners would be capable of hearing the Word on one condition-if they took socially costly steps necessary to modify their behavior. Painters, for example, could be accepted as catechumens if they refrained from depicting pagan themes.” As for soldiers, the Apostolic Tradition assesses them, like the members of other professions, by their capacity to hear the Word: did their external professional commitments the tasks and milieux and religious commitments of their jobs-enable them to receive the Christian good news in churches that emphasized patience and in which reconciliation with the alienated brother was a precondition for prayer? The Apostolic Tradition’s assumption is clear. Inner and outer are inextricable; if you live in a certain way in everyday life, you cannot hear, comprehend, or live the gospel that the Christian community is seeking to embody as well as teach. The church will not baptize people in hopes that they will change thereafter.

The church’s witness was the second reason that the teachers carefully examined the candidates in the First Scrutiny. As a catechumen, would the candidate’s behavior represent the church well or let the church down? Christians are to “be competitors… among the nations [gentes]” by their exemplary behavior; if they behave conventionally, the pagans will conclude that there is nothing in Christianity worth investigating. So if a potential candidate is married to a husband (who may be pagan), let her be admitted as a catechumen, provided she is willing to be taught “to be content with her husband.” Her admission is conditional on receiving teaching; as we have seen, the church was open to having women members, chaste and sexually disciplined, who were married to pagan men. However, the church categorically refused to admit to the catechumenate other candidates whose occupations contradicted the church’s teaching. For example, in the case of men who were makers of idols or gladiators whose profession involved killing, the teacher’s verdict was crisp: “Let them cease or be cast out.”

But for the sake of the church’s witness, other candidates whose jobs were at least in part acceptable could be admitted on the condition that they gave up their unacceptable behavior. For example, in some places soldiers had been attracted to the Christian communities that rejected all forms of killing, including killing in warfare. So the teachers responded to a soldier by saying, “Let him not kill a man. If he is ordered, let him not go to the task nor let him swear.” If the soldier was unwilling to submit to this limitation of his professional behavior, the verdict was “Let him be cast out.” Four times in chapters 15 and 16 of the Apostolic Tradition, the teachers accept applicants on the condition that they receive teaching; three times they accept applicants on the condition that they give up unacceptable behavior; and ten times the teachers respond by categorically refusing applicants. In one case, the teachers are astonishingly flexible: when a man teaching young children (whose lessons involve pagan stories) has no other trade, the teachers determine that “he should be forgiven.” Church leaders of a later age might have said, “Let’s admit them as they do their current jobs and eventually, when they have ‘heard the word,’ they will think their way into a new life.” The church of the Apostolic Tradition says in effect, “No, our approach is the opposite. We believe that people live their way into a new kind of thinking. If we admit them as they engage in idolatry, immorality, and killing, they will be unable to ‘hear the word,’ and they will change the church, fatally compromising its distinctiveness, which is the basis of our witness.”

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Written in 2006, this small 80 page book by Buff Scott, Jr. is easy to read and highly recommended. If you’ve visited my Resources page, you can see all the books I’ve read over the last couple of years. This book has a passion that most of the others lack. There are only a few copies left in print. They can be purchased by going to Jon Zen’s website. In the search menu type “Buff” and his book will come up. It’s only $4.00.

When Moses’ descent from the Mountain of God was delayed, the children of Israel built an idol in the form of a golden calf and bowed down to it, thus corrupting themselves (Exodus 32:1-8). If the implication of the above caption carries any validity, the Christian community can be charged with idolatry, for she has built for herself “golden calves” in the likes of church edifices while Jesus’ descent from heaven is being delayed.

I affirm that church structures and edifices are monuments that testify of our idolatry. The issue is not whether it is right or wrong to meet somewhere. The issue is whether or not we have built church structures and edifices and set them apart-sanctified them as holy articles or entities. I’m convinced we have. The evidence surrounds us. If I might be so bold, the organized church is as guilty of idolatry as were the children of Israel who erected Asherah poles as symbols of worship.

“Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved [consecrated] stone in your land to bow down before it” (Lev. 26:1).

Protestants and Catholics have done just that. Catholics have not only set up “consecrated stones” in the form of “holy” church structures, but they have made idols and images and bow down to them. We are speaking of earthen material destitute of emotions- idols and images that cannot hear, speak, or understand. Protestants, on the other hand, have set up their elaborate edifices and crosses and view them as sanctuaries and hallowed designs. There may be a few exceptions, but the rule seems to be universal.

There’s an old maxim, “Our heart is where our money is.” If we will but consider the hundreds of millions of dollars that are squandered on church structures, designs, religious inventions, edifices, statues, and compare that amount to the few dollars we spend on seeking and saving the lost and feeding the genuinely poor, we don’t need a prophet to locate our hearts. If this isn’t idolatry, I’ve lost my ability to reason. In the institutional church, money has become the “name of the game.”

And speaking of “games,” be on the lookout for those churchy “pledge cards.” Usually, they’re just another way of bleeding us blind so that the “holy edifice” idol can be even more embellished and revered. Instead, I suggest we bypass the collection plate and “pledge cards” and send our dollars to evangelize unbelievers and help feed the world’s poor.

But no! We’re too busy with our home-based “materialistic evangelism” to bother with the lost or to fret over empty stomachs.

When we mull over the fact that an evangelist and his family in Asia, Africa, India and several other world locations, where responsive hearts are abundant, can be supported for as little as $50 a month, but we don’t because we have an edifice to construct and a deadbeat pulpiteer to keep vocationally afloat, it is heartbreaking and depressing.

There are scores of missionaries who have been “called home” from evangelistic fields who could no longer be supported because of a materialistic program back home. This is not only despairing, it is an evil and a misplacement of priorities.

Ours is a history of a noble movement that apostatized centuries ago when Jesus’ command to “get out and go” was replaced by the clergy to “come in and stay.” Our idols-churches-have isolated us from the world’s needs, immobilized us, nailed our pants and panties to cushioned pews, and provoked us to import professionals to do our ministries. We no longer have to speculate why the world looks upon us in disgust and laughs at our efforts to “save” them.

To clean out one of the cobwebs some of you may have accumulated, let it be said that I have never argued that believers should not come together. For if we’re going to encourage and stimulate each other’s faith, and we ought, we must have a designated place to meet-whether in the living room of our home, under the shade of an old apple tree, or in some idol (church structure).

My whole point has been that our priorities are misplaced. We spend millions of dollars on our idols-venerated structures and edifices and very little on evangelism and feeding the world’s hungry. As I see it, we are as guilty of idolatry as were the children of Israel and the pagans of their day. I entertain no doubt but that my analysis is correct.

We esteem our church structures as the “works of our mighty hands” as though God Himself built them. We refuse to be ousted from our comfort zones. The cushions are too comfortable, and we delight in being hand-fed by hirelings who induce sleep by their stagnated “sermons.” We are stalemated with no hope of recovery unless we revamp the whole system and start over.

It was one of those “series of events” that our Lord loves to orchestrate. I was introduced to some articles by Buff Scott, Jr. by my good friend Jon Zens, and like I always do, immediately looked up the author to find out more about him. There wasn’t a lot about Buff on social media but I did get his email and found out that he lived in Phoenix. Imagine my delight when I found out that Buff lived only 10 minutes away from me. I recently spent some time with him and found him still active at soon-to-be 97 years old. He’s been writing a weekly newsletter called Reformation Rumblings for almost 40 years and he has been a proponent of relational gatherings for almost 50 years. You can read a sample of his newsletter here. If you would like to be added to his mailing list, please contact me. The following is an excerpt of one of his three books where he defends relational gatherings and his friend Olan Hicks defends the conventional church model.

If we reflect upon what has been addressed and corroborated by heaven’s declarations thus far, I think it is safe to say that the early ekklesia was not composed of sects, denominations, churches, or religious parties. God’s colony of redeemed sinners functioned as a humane and evangelistic community. Their meetings were informal but orderly, serious and alive, responsive, and mutually managed. Ours are “services,” as at a funeral, largely non-responsive and non-stimulating.

The early meetings were bereft of pulpits, collections to buy and maintain flashy edifices and to keep an elite pulpiteer vocationally afloat, ritualistic nonsense, and pew-sitters. Their environment was family-like. Our gatherings resemble formal business meetings, where business or worship doesn’t begin until the hands on the clock are at a certain crossroads. Our overall anatomy mirrors a corporation, an institution, not a compassionate community of concerned ones.

What dissimilarity! We have retrogressed, not progressed. We have traded the holy for the common, the celestial for the terrestrial, the spiritual for the materialistic, the sacred for the plain. Yet there are many receptive and seeking hearts within the corridors of the apostate church. God will deliver them, if they are willing to remove their soiled garments and replace them with garments of reconciliation. His children no longer need wallow in the partisan litter of the religious establishment, for God will raise up reformers to rescue His elect. He always has. He always will.

But it isn’t likely He will penetrate the divisive armor of those whose hearts are solidly enslaved by the institutional church, and whose deep-seated infirmity is “mad church disease.” The divisive spirit is a work of our carnal nature. It is reflected thusly: “We are right and others are wrong; we are the only church Jesus founded; no one else regards the Bible as the only source of authority as we do; all of our teachings are from the Bible and are error free.”

As long as this separatist spirit lingers within the contemporary church, she will never be able to apply a healing balm to “mad church disease.” Freedom in Jesus will always escape those who parrot this mindset and exhibit a cliquish spirit.

It is indeed a rarity to find freedom in the apostate church. The reason is that the party line must be parroted, her precepts supported, her traditions preserved, and the “church system” idolized. If we veer a little to the right or lean a little to the left, we will soon be verbally disciplined and told to shape up or ship out-or worse. This is not freedom-it is bondage. To find a man who is truly free to speak his mind and heart while employed by a church, or by one of her organizations, is like looking for shelter in a hailstorm. Even pew-sitting peasants are not allowed the freedom to speak their heart and mind without ecclesiastical reprisal.

The only way to be free in Jesus is to cast off our shackles and disavow the sectarian systems religious parties that have subjugated us, and that includes all of them. This I have done. This I will not undo. No church or religious organization upon the face of planet Earth has one bit of control over my life, my mind, or my beliefs. I will no longer be a bondservant to any of them. My only Master is Jesus and He alone. I will forever be His slave. I refuse to bow to any other. “Give me freedom or give me death” will always be my cry. For without freedom to think, to dissent, to investigate, and to question, our walk with the Lord would be hard to negotiate.

In a couple of places in this excerpt Buff mentions Mad Church Disease which is the title of one of Buff’s books. I hope to review it soon.