Recognition
Christ's Living Body
by John P. Baker
The Local Church Unit – Its size and shape
When we come to ask the question? ‘Is there a given size for a local church in the New Testament?' the answer is plainly ‘no'. We can agree quite definitely with the Chinese Pastor Watchman Nee in The Normal Christian Church Life, that the only basis the New Testament gives for the division of the Church into local units is geographical – that is, the different localities in which its members are resident. (It is conceivable that a church might also divide into separate meetings on the basis of language under exceptional circumstances. On the whole those circumstances did not exist in the Roman Empire with Greek as the ‘lingua franca'; hence we have no instance of such a division in the New Testament.)
<< Back
Source: Baker, John P. Christ's Living Body: An Examination of Ministry in the Local Church. London: Coverdale House, n.d.: 37.
|
