The divisions and disagreements in the New Testament were within churches; there is no indication that anyone marched off and started anything new. And as divisions did occur later, they were not based on anyone going off to start a new church, they were when a bishop refused to vacate his see and so his church was effectively a “new” body.
As for reformers being driven away from the church, that came centuries later.
I really need a bigger house . . .
or maybe I could turn the old piano room into a library?
Almost all my old school notes, papers, etc. are in a storage unit I got when the plan was that the mom was going to sell the house and I was going to be joining some friends ninety miles away – the storage unit was very convenient to that location and I really need to get this house organized so I can go retrieve all that stuff!
I think I even know where my material about Loehe would be, as in which box – but that doesn’t do me much good just now (especially since I somehow managed to bang my left shin up bad enough it isn’t capable of pushing the clutch, so I can’t even drive at the moment).
And given that the titles would be in German, and my useful old German atrophied a good quarter-century ago, my memory is no help.
Dang upper respiratory issue turned my laugh into a cough. My own reading list is about four hundred books deep . . .
Not necessarily – online church just makes me ache for the real thing, especially when the best online church anywhere near is over $50 in gas from here.
Sorry about your shin and U.R.I. No fun at all.
Well, don’t worry about it. In the meantime I should be studying up on my German, too. Atrophy is such a ghastly reality. But there are so many, many things to do!
Some years ago Burton Cummings, a Canadian musician and song writer, was visiting NYC and stepped into our church. He was so struck by the beauty of the sanctuary and the Lord’s presence that he wrote a song about the experience. Apparently he is not able to participate in organized religion.
Here’s the song: Burt Cummings sings, “I’m scared”
Much later, he came back for another visit, this time bringing a camera man. (We welcome tourists who drop in to take pictures, but we don’t like unauthorized recordings but hey…) Mr. Cummings was lucky that day, and he was able to film inside the church and reminisce about his spiritual experience. (btw, he calls it a cathedral but it’s just a church.)
Here is his reflection:
Perhaps. For me, the churches i frequent, they do both. We go out and preach the gospel to strangers. I talked for about 45 minutes earlier with a couple I met while hiking. Got their numbers and we are going to do a Bible study tomorrow.
The congregations I attended will have pastors well after I am dead. I honestly think a lack of Christians sharing the gospel is the main drive to many places falling apart. I honestly image in a hundred years, if you wanted to find a church to go to, you’ll be able to find one within 15 minutes of your house.
I kind of feel like more and more people nowadays allow their introverted nature to isolate them. More and more people get the bulk of their socializing from online. I think it’s very unhealthy. I think people need to start getting out more. I even see a growing issue of kids being lonely because their parents don’t socialize and so their parents don’t have friends with kids and so on. Tons of Christians are too scared, or ashamed to mention Christ to strangers.
This makes me think of why I don’t talk politics with my neighbors… I know we’re on fairly different sides of the political spectrum, but there’s no point going over it in person when there are other things we can talk about. They’ve watched out for us (in a good way) when needed, and we’d do the same for them… physical proximity seems to trump a lot of other factors. Maybe we can afford “higher levels of candor” online because we have no expectation of having to carry on those relationships in other areas of life. Which can be a helpful thing when trying to hash out ideas, but can also erode accountability and health if we let it (speaking to myself here).
It can definitely be draining for me – things like mingling and “greeting time” just feel like too much some days.
I struggle with church because I’m still grappling with my fear of judgment, that probably came from growing up fundamentalist but probably ties into my personality too. I just tend to shut down in some ways because I’m aware I’m always being watched and judged in religious spaces (not that I haven’t participated on the other side of that judgment as well). Being online has the benefit of allowing me to cut through preliminaries and engage with more sincerity without worrying about what I’m wearing, how I’m “presenting myself” physically, or whether I’m living up to someone else’s conservative Baptist ideals about how women should be. I’m not saying in-person meetings aren’t also helpful, but both have their pitfalls in different areas, I guess.
I think getting older and being retired has helped me to realize most people are more accepting of who you are than you give them credit for, though there are exceptions. But those exceptions should not unduly influence your living your life. That makes old age and retirement something you can aspire to, I suppose. 
It does sort of play into the point made in the article that one good thing about church is that it allows us to be with people different than us, and hopefully to let us see them as brothers and sisters, and them to us the same way, I know it doesn’t always work, and it often means we have to focus on our commonality rather than our differences. It however is important, and helps us to avoid demonizing those who differ politically or even theologically. Sort of the way Haigt describes learning to see others more positively by understanding where they are coming from in The Righteous Mind.
It probably doesn’t matter for most folks here, but without churches, where is an organ scholar supposed to learn his craft? And what of the organ repertoire from Bach, Telemann and others? You might not care, but there are still many people who do!
Good to know – I guess I will look forward to that then. I’m already starting to care less in some areas, so I just need to nurture that in others. But the “Sunday morning,” especially at a fairly traditional church, is still hard because I still sometimes come at it with a very “church clothes” mentality.
I like that idea, and that is a healthy way to approach it. But I’ve been reading more and more about how churches are becoming more polarized across political lines, which tracks with what I’ve seen. In most of my life, the idea of “finding a church” is all about looking for one where people have the same theological ideas as you (and presumably political as well, since they usually overlap in evangelicalism). If that’s what people expect from a church, then it can be hard to still feel like you belong when you’re no longer fighting the same culture wars as most others around you – and might in some political issues even be considered the enemy. But I think you’re also right in that many people are more accepting than you may think – sometimes those with a gatekeeper mentality are just louder. I see people who are “living in sin” according to some, but are still greeted and considered friends by others. You just never know.
I can’t find an orthodox one that would be healthy for me within fifteen minutes of my house now.
This brought to mind a Foursquare church I attended for a while just a short walk from the university. I wasn’t the only one to notice that it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes in the semi-social time before things got started to know who among the crowd was the pastor; as someone put it, he just “oozed pastorness”. And whatever it was, it was contagious; that was the most welcoming church I’ve ever been at, with people from homeless drug addicts to people on probation to wealthy businessmen to university folks and more, all treating each other as family so obviously it was like a screamed invitation to come belong.
Then that pastor retired and the associate pastor took over. Within just months the family atmosphere shifted to one far more judgmental as the focus changed from welcoming all to measuring everyone’s moral status, giving preference to those with certain qualities or abilities, aiming at prestige in the community . . . . I held on for a while but it didn’t take long before I agreed with my sister’s assessment that it just wasn’t church any longer because self-appointed ‘gatekeepers’ had stepped up to run things and they were actually encouraged by the pastor who pandered to politics and popular prejudices.
I had the privilege of spending a chunk of time studying and learning about the original Calvary Chapel with Chuck Smith, who excelled in putting people in their place when they tried to exclude anyone and set the example of being at peace with everyone. It was very, very disappointing years later when I ran into a Calvary Chapel not far from where I was living and discovering that to really belong there you had to have the right politics and the same theological views on every little detail – so very unlike the original it was shocking. What really hit me was that they had fabricated this image of Chuck Smith that fit their politics and everything else; where on many questions Smith would answer, “What do the scriptures say? What have you found there?” they had pat answers that weren’t to be disagreed with.
That’s too bad… it’s sad how little it can take (seemingly) to turn a welcoming place into a place of exclusivity.
Gee, I wonder if there’s anyone else that US evangelicals have come to treat this way… (slight sarcasm there). But that sounds like another example of this obsession with “answers” – needing to be right about everything and cutting out freedom and mystery. Kind of like how I often hear the word “biblical” being used – nothing wrong with aiming for biblical principles, but I often hear it treated as this weapon that seeks to banish anything that doesn’t fall in line with the speaker’s narrow interpretation of what constitutes “biblical” thoughts or behavior.
One thing that really hit me was that when on our study/investigation visit to the original Calvary Chapel one of the guys asked Smith if he believed that the bread and the wine in communion really are the body and blood of Jesus, and he answered to the effect of “That’s what He said, isn’t it?” but that the Calvary Chapel I ran into later absolutely denied the validity of that response even when I told them of what Smith had said: they had generated this idol of what Smith had to have been and weren’t interested in anything that differed. The underlying difference to me was that I never heard Smith give an answer that didn’t require the questioner to go back and think about scripture, but these folks excelled in answers seemingly designed to shut people up and get them to fall in line.
[Much later I worked under a Lutheran priest/pastor who responded in the same way; he always sent people back to the scriptures.]
We may not like the Christians around us and where we meet up, but I still think I’m a century you’ll still have dozens of churches nearby to reject.
It is sad but true that very few responsible persons can change the atmosphere and focus in a small church community. Especially if the leading person (pastor) gains a strong authority and get support from other leading persons that do not have the courage to stand against the leader, things can go wrong in a relatively short time. Often the personality of the leader is not mature and stable, controlling the behavior of the members is an attempt to gain a feeling of control, especially when an inexperienced person gains the position after a respected leader and feels that he does not get a similar respect. Alternatively, the personality of the leader may have a strong element of narcissism. It is unfortunate that small church communities are environments where strong narcissistic personalities can often thrive.
The opposite can also happen. Church communities with an oppressive or otherwise limiting atmosphere can change to something positive. I happen to belong to such a church community. People that had negative experiences in the community decades ago are now returning and some of them joining the community because they feel that there is an open and loving atmosphere and the leaders do not have an unhealthy level of authority - if the leaders do something unwise, they can be criticized and corrected without negative consequences to the person that brings up the matter.
I think I’ve related the story of the congregation whose pastor moved to a different one, where they sort of stumbled around aimlessly but then started to pull things together to the point that when they finally did get another pastor he was blown away by the fact that he wouldn’t have to deal with finances, with maintenance or much else, so that he commented that his courses in parish administration had been made useless. That started with just one person who realized one day that he was doing less of his duties at the church than when they’d had a pastor and resolved to do his job so well they wouldn’t need input from a pastor for it, and he persuaded the other officers to do the same. That became contagious beyond just the elected officers into every aspect of the congregation’s life.
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