Vision for a Biblical Church

Red-Curious · 2019-09-04T15:31:40+00:00

PM me about this. I've already got something like this started with some RPC guys and you're welcome to take a look at what we're doing and draw some ideas from it to work with.

For the more general crowd, here's how I see a biblical congregation operating:

Christ is the head, as the apostles acknowledged.
Skeletal budget; no buildings, expensive programs, curriculum, etc.; no mandatory tithes; staff have alternative options for supporting themselves if giving doesn't cover their needs, just as the apostles had, ensuring no compromise of the Gospel or biblical truth in order to secure funds.
Short-term training model. The goal is not to keep people in your ministry for a lifetime. It's to train them up and send them out to run their own ministry after a few years. This is what Jesus and the apostles did.
Crowd-sourcing logistics. You use what you already have available to arrange for meetings - homes, coffee shops, etc. The people you train up use their own natural life circumstances to reach the next generation. This is what happened in the early church, which did not rely on a centralized building, but on people allowing use of their homes, cooking from their own food, etc.
Corporate meetings of everyone in the lineage only to occur when necessary or desired, not ritualistically or routine-based, in the same degree of emphasis or lack thereof that Jesus and the apostles modeled (i.e. permit it when it's in high demand and people won't leave you alone, but always pull away from this model to focus on the few).
No "all the other churches are doing it" mentality; no prefabricated curriculum or content, though referencing outside material when useful is fine. Stick to the Scriptures, as Jesus and the apostles did.
All 5 instructional aspects of discipleship incorporated: tell them what, show them how, let them try, send them out, pass it on, taken straight from Jesus' model
All 3 structural aspects of discipleship incorporated: fun/games/relationship building, life/ministry skills training, personal issues addressed, which Jesus modeled
Tangible vision/picture for what the congregation will be producing when it is done training up a person, which is communicated up-front, as Jesus did ("Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men")
Intentional pathway for getting a person from where they're at now to become someone living up to that vision/picture, as Jesus had (his entire discipleship process)

In short, everything must be taken straight from Jesus' model. Additional boundaries can be put in place as helpful tools for cultural purposes (ex. setting up bylaws so you qualify as a 501C(3) if you feel so inclined), but these culturally influenced tools are to be nothing more than tools and must not affect the core vision or alter it in any way.

Miracles, signs, wonders, casting out of demons, etc. are all byproducts of such a ministry, not a thing that we must mandate into a ministry. They are the evidence of the success of the ministry, if that makes sense. So yes, it should be happening, but it shouldn't be forced into the model itself.

OrlandoTheAxe · 2019-09-04T04:06:58+00:00

I'd like to see churches be a bit less materialistic. I attended a church in TX that didn't even have their own building. The congregation met in a rented room in the student center of a college campus and packed the all the church supplies in and out. The majority of the budget went to missions since the operating costs were so low. The experience made me second guess the priorities of many modern churches.

Miracles signs and wonders, the casting out of demons.

Are you implying that one can construct a church in a way that facilitates these types of things?

Title	Vision for a Biblical Church
Author	NoFaithInThisSub
Upvotes	6
Comments	9
Date	September 4, 2019 12:13 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askRPC
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/askRPC/comments/czd7mz/vision_for_a_biblical_church/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askRPC/vision-for-a-biblical-church.304641 https://theredarchive.com/post/304641