An Authentic Christ-Centered Church - What Would it Look Like?

WHO HEADS THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH?
Was a church a building or something else? For those longing for authentic Christianity, this post opens a series of articles that will explore the topic of a church truly patterned after Christ and the first-century model of Christianity.

Christ said, I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me. John 14:6

With these words, Jesus indicated that he was the way to a relationship with God, he was a light, shining in a dark place.

An Authentic Christ-Centered Church

• Church Name: A church with a name that acknowledged Christ, not a man, a religious persuasion, nor an organization. After all, "Peter's Church" or "Paul's Church" or "Reformed" or "Orthodox" or "Evangelical," or "LDS" or JW Org" would do nothing to signify whom the church was built around.

• With Christ as Head: A church built around Christ as the head of the church, the only mediator between God and men and the only one to look to for salvation--not to any man, nor any body of men, nor to any organization claiming to act as an intercessory or claiming to represent God.

Master Guidebook

• Using the Bible: A church using the Bible as the master guidebook, so as to be "completely equipped" for every good work.

• Christlike: A church comprised of members that recognized Christ as the model to follow to live an authentic Christian life.

House Churches

• House Churches: Holding meetings in homes, as did the early Christians, who gathered in house churches to fellowship and worship, with the objective of forging a close-knit community of believers focused on spiritual things, instead of focused on building expensive and showy buildings or huge corporations, as is seen in modern times. House churches would ensure the best use of donations to help the impoverished and to share the good news. Of how much more benefit to humans if sums collected were used to benefit people instead of to build religious empires.

• Worship: Enjoying association, singing praises, reading, studying, and discussing the scriptures, breaking bread together and observing the Lord's Evening Meal, building a community of believers humbly united in Christ.  

• Oversight: Having no paid clergy or paid ministers. All church decisions made by group members.

• Freedom of Conscience: Allowing fellow Christians to respond to the scriptures as their hearts impelled them, rather than setting policy for every facet of Christian life or policing members. Allowing for freedom of conscience in personal, medical, and spiritual decisions.

Grace

• Grace: Recognizing the heavenly free gift of grace offered to believers under the new covenant, and thus adopting a faith-based model for Christianity and not an "earn-your-salvation" works-based model.  

• Freedom of Religion: Embracing tolerance and allowing for freedom of religion. Welcoming other believers in Christ from other denominations as fellow Christians, all working towards the same end.

Fellow Workers in Christ

• Voluntary Donations: Giving and using voluntary donations to help the poor, as Jesus directed, both impoverished church members and the community at large, as well as to produce Bibles.

• Ministry: Distributing Bibles, free-of-charge, around the world to all those seeking spiritual insights. Witnessing and sharing the good news with others, using the Bible (not other books containing interpretations of men), confident that the spiritual seeds planted would bear fruit and spread around the world, as they did in the first and subsequent centuries.

• Wrongdoing: Offering scriptural assistance and guidance to a member who has fallen into spiritual wrongdoing but leaving judging up to God. Practicing forgiveness and not shunning.

• Protecting Members: Protecting congregation members and their children from "wolves who might enter the flock," issuing a general warning if there was a known or suspected risk. Reporting cases of criminal wrong-doing to the appropriate authorities, not shielding transgressors to present a clean public image.

• Freedom to Leave Without Punishment: No punitive action initiated if someone stopped attending, left the church, or joined another faith group.

• No Perpetual Shunning: No shunning of members or encouraging them to sever ties with friends or loved ones for any reason. Leaving the judging up to God, as directed in the scriptures.