1001--beginnings

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have written Simple Church Minute commentaries in one-, two-, and five-minute sizes.  I just realized that I, somehow, never got around to posting the transcripts of some of the one-minute commentaries.  I should further mention that what is below couldn’t be crammed into one minute (at least by me) without a sound editing program.  It is a great test of what is important to say on any subject by forcing one to put it into a time frame that is small.

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1001—beginnings

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Between 313 and 323 A.D., Constantine, emperor of Rome, declared Christianity legal in the Empire, making it co-equal with paganism.  As part of that, Rome poured money into the church to have buildings of worship, people to be in charge of the buildings, legal tax exempt status for the organizations and persons who managed the churches and buildings, and introduced regular collections of gifts to pay for all this bureaucratic mess. Roman orators started “converting” to Christianity and taking the paid positions of overseeing the churches and their getting a regular speaking gig.  As with any bureaucracy, the system stuck and morphed in various directions.  The Reformation discarded many theological distortions that would happen over the next dozen centuries, but the structure remained untouched, just morphed again.  Today, in countries where faith in Jesus is illegal, churches are groups of persons who meet together to worship Jesus and encourage each other without man made organization attached, but the amount of believers who worship this way in the free world is small.  For more information about organic worship, visit www.hrscn.org.

Simple Church Minute 19--what "pagan" means

19—what pagan means

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            In other blips, I have mentioned things in the church that have pagan origins.  I wish to clarify that the word “pagan” doesn’t mean bad or evil; it refers to an ancient religion that was the state religion during the days of the early church.  Greek mythology is connected to it.  It isn’t true, no significant amount of people believe it anymore, but that’s not the point.  Having a connection to it isn’t in and of itself bad—the names of the seven days of the week come from it, we can’t do anything about it, any seven words would do.  Roman paganism used chairs and carpets in their temples before the church did.  That doesn’t make chairs and carpets bad.  If you have a picture of the Roman sun god on your carpet, that’s another story.  Colossians chapter 1 verse 18 tells us Jesus is the head of the church.

            A Sunday or whatever day worship meeting is different.  An order of worship comes from paganism.  The Bible tells us about the Holy Spirit, not any person, determining order.  First Corinthians chapter 14 verse 26 tells us about mutual participation and edifying each other in worship.  That is impossible when one person does all the talking and believes its his job to set the agenda.  Preaching, as we see it today in most churches, isn’t what the Bible means by the word, and suppresses mutual edification.  Many services, when God isn’t allowed to be spontaneous, are boring.  Large numbers of people make mutual participation impossible.  How many people did Jesus mentor?  12, the disciples, and possibly at a lesser level, 70.  Personally, I’d advise against trying to do more than Jesus without specific guidance by the Holy Spirit.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, see http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.