(1 of 3)
Can one be a Christian and never go to church? Of course, we need to define "going to church." The Scriptures condemn the pointless practice of going to an institutional assembly for the wrong reasons (Ps. 50, Amos 5:21-24, etc.). Many say they avoid church because they worship God alone, "in their own way." Well, we certainly are not required to worship in the identical manner--besides, there is no one way described in the Bible anyway. But one can't really be a Christian alone. Christianity, just like Judaism, is corporate from its very roots. It is absolutely essential for God's children to learn to work and play together in the kingdom, as house church theology places the kingdom both here (in the church) and in the future (in heaven). So there can be no individual Christian, nor can there be a "radio" church Christian, nor even an "Internet" church Christian. Why? Because of the person-to-person relationship that is at the very heart of the doctrine of church.
One might say that the relationships in the institutional church excel in quantity and the house church provides a chance for better quality. But when Jesus said "the two or three gathered together" (Mt. 18:20), it seems that he had the house church in mind. One can hide in a large church--going week after week and never really building a relationship with anyone. When people ask, "How are you?", one responds with an automatic "Fine" no matter how big the hurt may be inside. This is not the way the church is to behave, whether it be big or small. But it is easier to share burdens within a small fellowship because the the lower risk that a confidence might be abused.
Recovering the Fallen Church
By the time of the Protestant Reformation, "church" had so long been in alliance with the state that it surely must have seemed a "department" of the government to its subjects. One would go to the state to pay taxes or register the transfer of a deed, and one would go to the church to register a birth or to have a marriage performed. It would be a long and acrimonious process that would span continents and centuries before the notion that there should be a would reach the acceptance that it has today--and there still remains great political pressure in our own day that laws based on the Bible should be re-instituted in order to rid society of harmful elements.
The house church movement saw the church as having "fallen," and probably would have dated that fall in AD 313, when the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan which gave Christians tolerance in the Roman Empire. Later, in 380, Christianity became mandatory for Roman citizenship. Many in the institutional church today still regard these events as a great and glorious day for Christ, but the radical reformers saw in it a tremendous evil. Constantine began a process that changed the church from a persecuted minority to the status of royalty. When he summoned the bishops to Nicaea for the First Ecumenical Council in 325, he had them all arrayed in robes of royalty and saw to their comfort as honored guests of state. He doted over the bishops who had suffered crippling injury during the persecutions of Christianity. It is not hard to see how these bishops saw in this radical change in their social status the very fulfillment of the promises of God--the state would help the church reform the world and then Christ would return to reign.
As it quickly became flooded with unregenerate people, the church was forced to form hierarchical systems like other human organizations and evolved a theology around the "bishop." That is, where the was, there was the church. God was understood as working through this chain of human power. This idea had its roots not in the Bible, but in Greek philosophy--God was perfect, humanity was corrupt; therefore, the way to build the church is to create a layered organization that increased in purity from the bottom to the top (see the figure).
Protestants reject this approach in general. Luther spoke of the "priesthood of the believer," rejecting the need for any intermediary between the individual believer and God. The radical reformers accepted this contribution but centered their understanding of their relationship with God on community, rather than on the individual. They saw the Protestant model as excessively individualistic. It did not take into account the need for relationships between believers.
