BUILDING ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN (12)

We now come to some very important components to building according to the pattern the local church. These are all found in the New Testament.

SMALL GROUPS/CELL GROUPS

Although in many places the local churches in the New Testament  were quite large, for example historians tell us the Ephesian church had up to 75000 members. There were no buildings that could contain such large numbers. Even in Jerusalem Solomon’s Porch or the Upper Room could only holds some hundreds of people.  There were no church buildings until well into the 4th century after Constantine recognised Christianity as a legal religion. Sunday was also a working day, so either very early in the morning or at night believers would meet together in homes. They probably  squeezed 40 to 50 people into a house (we would call it a small church today. So the Sunday celebration as we understand it, was not part of the early church, we all love to be with God’s people on a Sunday morning  but is that really the church ???

In a small group there can be :

Real Caring

Real Fellowship

Believers sharing together

A development of our spiritual gifts

Worship

Prayer

Sharing around the Word of God, and so many other things.

Three hundred years ago John Wesley the founder of Methodism created the “Class meeting” for the above purposes. Many think it was people like Paul Yonggi Cho that re-introduced  Cell Groups.  His church is Seoul South Korea is a model cell church. Margaret and I had the privilege of visiting the church in 1978 to attend the first English Church Growth Seminar there. It was an unforgettable experience. There were less than 80000 members in the church then, now it is over 750000 Truly a modern miracle.

If you are not part of a small group, I encourage you to make the effort to get involved in one, it will be life changing.