Timothy's Thoughts

I heard the other day that a lot of people are dropping out of mega-churches and are attending house churches as their only place of worship. A house church is a church that meets in someone’s home and has less than twelve or so members. I’ve got no problem with churches like that. I grew up in a church about that size. The highest attendance I ever saw was twenty-five, but we had a church building to meet in. I’ve known of several mission points that were started by meeting in someone’s home. Some say they are returning to the way the early church worshiped by having house churches. Personally, I think that’s hogwash. There’s evidence in the Bible of big churches, little churches and everything in between. If you feel more comfortable in a tiny church, by all means attend a tiny church, but don’t try to say that makes you closer to God. Another justification for these house churches is that people see it as a way of shaking off the tyranny of the larger churches, requiring them to p...

Y ou’ve probably heard that location can be a character, but more frequently, we may find that an organization is a character. Christian authors often mention a church in their books. In many of these books, the church is more like McDonalds than it is a church. A man and a woman attend a church – his church, her church or some church they attend on vacation. The pastor preaches some great sermon, the woman takes notes and the man and woman discuss how great the sermon was on the way home. The whole point of the sequence is to “show” that they attend church. Does that sound anything like the church you attended on Sunday? I hope not. On Sunday, I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my truck. I saw some friends across the parking lot talking to some other friends. I reached the front door and another friend of mine opened the front door. He made a comment about something, that was something of a private joke. Another man—a man whom I have visited in his home—handed me a bulletin ...

P aul wrote to Timothy in order to give him special instruction on how people in the church should behave themselves. In I Timothy 1:3, 4 that the church at Ephesus had problems with false doctrine as well as problems with people spending too much time talking about fables and endless genealogies. So, Paul tells Timothy what they should be doing instead. What does he tell him is the most important thing people should do when the church assembles? Pray. ( I Timothy 2:1-4 ) These days, we hear a lot about styles of worship, how many services we should have or whether we should have small group meetings during the week or on Sunday morning. In all of that, we may have lost sight of this simple truth. The most important thing for a church to do when it comes together for worship is to pray. We are to pray for our needs. We are to intercede for others. We are to give thanks to God. We are to pray. We are to pray for all men. We are to pray for those in authority. Why? So, that we may have...