eklektos

I’ve decided that I’m going to start the process to begin a home church. I have decided to do this for the fol­low­ing rea­sons: (1) I better learn how to do it before I go out into the field, (2) it would pro­vide a good envi­ron­ment for others my age to work out doc­tri­nal issues, (3) and it can be a church that actu­ally does bal­ance between striv­ing for good, God-​glorifying doc­trine while keep­ing the Com­mis­sion at mind.

I like the name for the church: “eklektos” which is the Greek word trans­lated “elect.” In fact, the Greek word for church is “ekkleÌ„sia” which lit­er­ally is an assem­bly of “called out” or “elect” ones (church and elect are rough syn­onyms in Greek). I believe it encap­su­lates the com­mis­sion of the church which is the meet­ing of the elect or saints of God. The fol­low­ing are doc­tri­nal dis­tinc­tives of the church:

  1. Sov­er­eign Grace. We hold fast to the truth that the nat­ural man is inca­pable of coming to Christ. There­fore, God’s divine decree of elec­tion is what avails the oppor­tu­nity for sal­va­tion, and Christ specif­i­cally died for those given to Him by the Father. This oper­at­ing grace is irre­sistible, and once God has regen­er­ated the believer he will never be lost.
  2. Inde­pen­dent. The church is not to be a part of any hier­ar­chy but only respon­si­ble to the Lord Jesus and the con­gre­ga­tion. The church is not to be affil­i­ated with a con­ven­tion or eccle­si­as­ti­cal hierarchy.
  3. Bap­tist. By this, I mean that we hold to the believ­ers bap­tism. All other dis­tinc­tives of Bap­tist eccle­si­ol­ogy are still to be decided (sep­a­ra­tion of church/state, mem­ber­ship, decid­ing who can par­take of the Lord’s Supper).
  4. Missional/Evangelical. We teach soundly the call of Christ to reach all of the nations (people groups) while prac­tic­ing evan­ge­lism any­where we might be.
  5. Covenen­tal. The church holds to the view that there remains no dis­tinc­tion between Old Tes­ta­ment Israel and the New Tes­ta­ment Church. We would hold that the Church has com­pleted Old Tes­ta­ment Judaism and now has the bear­ing of “true Israel” or people of God.
  6. Tra­di­tional. The church would favor a tra­di­tional or hymn-​based mode of wor­ship through song.

I just need to see who is interested.

Activity

7 total comments, leave your comment.
  1. Katrina
    Oct 30th 2005

    Is is a “Chris-idea” or a “God-idea”? And when are you going to the mis­sions field? If you still have some years ahead, be aware of each step of what God is lead­ing you to do..be aware that it is really easy to do some­thing because it is log­i­cal, but that it won’t suc­ceed unless it is some­thing God also wants us to do. God trains people in phases, step by step, and we need to follow each step and not bound ahead lest we fall on our face because our legs are not strong enough yet.

    I would just really pray about it and be sure that it where God is lead­ing you, not some­thing that you are doing because it makes sense to do it.

    We started a church plant in Scot­land out of neces­sity( 35 street kids became Chris­tians, and when we tried to plug them in to the local churches we were work­ing with- they didn’t like it because they were totally unchurched and caus­ing fights etc. And they didn’t know what to do with them…), but even then..it was very hard because we did so many things wrong at first- and it was hard because we def­i­nitely did not have enough work­ers. Start­ing a church is not a light thing- and some­thing that takes mas­sive com­mit­ment, respon­si­bil­ity, and prayer- not to men­tion the right people to come along­side of you and help.

    And also, don’t limit more cre­ative forms of wor­ship. Wor­ship through song is just one aspect of worship…

  2. Chris
    Oct 30th 2005

    Well, find­ing dis­tinc­tion between “my” and “God’s” idea is pretty much impos­si­ble. I don’t even think there is a way to know if any deci­sion we make is God’s idea out­side of His rev­e­la­tion (pes­simistic epis­te­mol­ogy show­ing through). I know “His Idea” is Com­mis­sion focused while stress­ing the impor­tance of edi­fy­ing believ­ers to ful­fill that Comis­sion. There­fore, after much con­sid­er­a­tion (months), I have decided that I am just going to start the process to build a church.

    I don’t really under­stand how this could not make sense. In my con­sid­er­a­tion I have given much thought to the eccle­si­as­ti­cal issues at hand while pon­der­ing deeply upon my abil­ity to shep­erd a flock. It is some­thing ulti­mately that will be suc­cess­ful through trial and error, but with the lead­ing of the Spirit I believe it can be done.

    Hon­estly, I have no idea when I could be in the field. It could be next June or next decade; I just don’t know. I do know from mobi­liza­tion resources that I must famil­iar­ize myself with the tools for being a suc­cess­ful ambas­sador of Christ. Ulti­mately, the goal and end of mis­sions is to start a church move­ment in unreached people groups that is self-​sustainable; so, I want to see what that looks like here. I’ve heard it said that if you’re not evan­ge­liz­ing and dis­ci­pling people in the U.S. things are not going to “click” when you go over­seas. This is a test­ing ground and a test­ing time for all these ideas.

    About wor­ship. Did I say I lim­ited cre­ative forms of wor­ship? No. I do believe how­ever that the NT is clear in the mode and manner to which wor­ship should exist inside of the church body. That is why I make a stance on the “traditional” as opposed to “contemporary” mode of wor­ship.

    Again, this is just my thesis. I don’t know what will come of it; but I at least want to get the ball rolling on these ideas. So, are you on board?

  3. Katrina
    Oct 31st 2005

    What does the NT say about wor­ship? I’m not famil­iar with what you are refer­ring to, can you explain fur­ther?

  4. nick
    Oct 31st 2005

    I’ve done quite a bit of read­ing on the ‘house church’ move­ment and there are many great things in them. How­ever, there are many impor­tant tra­di­tions that house churches don’t do well, such as preach­ing, lack of struc­ture. I think in a lot of ways the house­church move­ment is in reac­tion to the over-​institutionalized church. Still I’m not giving up yet on the insti­tu­tion­al­ized church. For some the HC is better, and maybe it is for you Chris, but don’t start one because the church at large (or IC) stinks. I’m all about church-​planting, and as you know I want to do it myself, how­ever, there are tons of books writ­ten to help you weigh out what is best in pro­claim­ing the gospel of Christ today. Just some random thoughts for you to think about…

  5. Chris
    Oct 31st 2005

    Kat­rina: Read about the Reg­u­la­tive Prin­ci­ple to wor­ship:

    “But the accept­able way of wor­ship­ping the true God, is insti­tuted by him­self; and so lim­ited by his own revealed will, that he may not be wor­shipped accord­ing to the imag­i­na­tions, and devices of men, or the sug­ges­tions of Satan, under any vis­i­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tions, or any other way, not pre­scribed in the Holy Scriptures.”

    Nick: I’m not “disillusioned” with the IC (I attend one now); I’m just want­ing to learn more about what it means to do church plant­ing. Plus, the whole goal–AGAIN–is that a house church becomes sus­tain­able on its own and in essence becomes a IC.

  6. Alecia Niese
    Oct 31st 2005

    Hey, by the way, speak­ing of home churches. My friends, their par­ents, a few cou­ples, and myself are into our third week of par­tic­i­pat­ing in/creating a home church envi­ron­ment. Are you inter­ested? I know I have men­tioned it before, but you skipped out last evening on it. We are still in the works of what we would like to do. To sum it up, we are taking the ‘radical’ route. By that I mean we are going/looking back to the orig­i­nal source (aka Bible :) ) of what church, prayer, wor­ship, dis­ci­ple­ship, and min­istry for­mats as well as what that incor­po­rates rather than look­ing at what soci­ety claims what church is. You are more than wel­come to be a part of it or simply check it out for ideas. More about that later… Grace and peace, Alecia

  7. nick
    Nov 3rd 2005

    one of me men­tors pas­tors a house church here in Louisville! http://​www.​ekkle​sianet.com/

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