hello my name's Tim Germain in this presentation is search to the biblical church the contrast in
the differences between the institutional church that follows man-made traditions and the biblical
church that we find within the pages of the New Testament it's been a journey for me for a number
of years and I trust that it'll be an education as well as an eye-opener as we look together into
the scriptures that we might truly understand what is the church that Jesus is building today
you mentioned the word Church today most people think of a large building that you walk into on
a Sunday you're greeted by an usher who gives you a program and describes the events from
beginning to end you're then seating some pews on both sides or in a large amphitheater and you
listen to one man give a message on a podium or an altar this is the common understanding what
going to church means to most people well the buildings where people go to church are called
by different names here in our town we have the Baptist Church the United Church the Presbyterian
Church the Reformed Church used to have an Anglican Church everybody has their own name
the denomination they're comfortable with and that's where people go to church inside these
buildings we have leaders men and women who do most of the speaking and teaching they go by
various names years ago I was one of these I went by the term pastor Reverend others go by Father
bishop in most churches churches you've got an agreement with the government and the agreement
is that the church will collect money and the government will provide charitable tax status
so to sum up we've got these buildings where there are activities being run the activities are being
run by for the most part paid professionals the people sitting in the pews for the most
part are expected to be silent it is run by a program there's something that's very controlled
about this something that's artificial about the expectation that an offering will be taken thus
offering keeps the program running it pays for the professionals and sometimes there would be
a special meeting just to eat a small cracker and also drink a small cup of juice we started
off with a statement which is in search of the biblical church but actually what we see today
is almost nothing like what is described in the Bible isn't that an amazing statement
we actually see for things that were true of all the churches that we see in the New Testament
but firstly when it comes to what you will call church government we see that in the churches
in the New Testament they governed themselves through the simple process of everyone in the
church seeking the Lord's will and together coming to agreement about what them all were saying now
they had leaders these leaders refer to as elders or pastors or bishops or different words for the
same people but these guys they were in charge I mean they shared in decision-making they were
part of the church but they weren't in charge but what they were were the mature brothers who were
further on with the Lord than anyone else and they acted as guides the acted as father figures they
were advisory as opposed to being executive and these leaders were always recognized from within
the church that they were going to lead so that's the first thing that we see that when it comes to
church government we have a leadership that is locally raised up and it's advisory like
their authority was simply moral authority not positional Authority but the decisions were always
made by the collective body of believers in the church so this is the first thing that we see of
church life in the New Testament I went to Bible School and one of our courses was on the pastoral
epistles and 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus and we looked at in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 at
the qualifications of elders and deacons and I thought back to times when our church had been
without a pastor in the pastoral search committee was looking for candidates to present to the
church as possible candidates for to be our next pastor and thinking back to those times I couldn't
recall once when the church had been encouraged to consider the qualifications in 1st Timothy 3
or Titus 1 we were looking at the man's education his abilities his degree is his seminary training
was he good in music was he good with young people was a good administrator but looking
at the pastoral epistles none of those things were mentioned his qualifications for church
leaders in fact only one ability was mentioned there and that was he needs to be able to teach
but all of the rest of the qualifications had to do with what kind of man is he what kind of a man
is he with his family does he have his children under control does he have a good testimony in the
community what's his reputation like is he a man given to anger or striking and so as I compared
what scripture said and what we were looking for is qualifications for church leaders I began to
see there was a big divergence between the two but eventually I myself became an ordained minister my
wife and I went as missionaries to the West Indies I understood we were going as New Testament church
planters planting churches that would function according to the New Testament and while we were
there our mission board planned a conference of all of our missionaries in the Caribbean to
consider the matter of church planting I was the youngest missionary there and they they asked me
for some reason to chair the panel discussion on the subject of church planting and I thought
I'd better do some study and I better do some homework so I went to a Christian bookstore
and looked for books on church planting at that time in that particular little store I couldn't
find any and so I got thinking well really where's the best place to go but the book of
Acts where the whole thing got started and so I just started reading the book of Acts reading
it over and over again evaluating the ministries of the different apostles the cities they visited
how they conducted their ministry what what the results were and then comparing the results of
these men as they went to these different cities and I began to realize that many things that we
were doing in our ordinary churches and what I was training the National believers to do I couldn't
find them in Scripture and one thing that really began to trouble me as I read through the book of
Acts repeatedly I couldn't find one church in all the New Testament that had one man like myself as
the pastor couldn't find any New Testament church with one man as the leader I discovered that every
New Testament church was eventually guided by a number of elders a plurality of elders
now the second aspect of the design that we see against Steve was already pointed us to it it's
quite simply the fact that church is made in houses it is always without exception in
somebody's house so this immediately tells us as well that churches were numerically small because
a house limits the size of the number of people you can get in it so we see that church is made
in houses and that each church was numerically small so the design that we see in the Bible is to
have lots and lots and lots of little churches as opposed to having a smaller number of numerically
big churches so that's the second aspect of the design house based and therefore numerically small