God told the Israelites that the only place where the should corporately worship Him and offer sacrifices would be at the tabernacle. And accordingly several times a year Israel would gather as an assembly (in the Greek, Ekklesia) to worship God at His appointed place. This emphasized the fact that while Israel was made up of many tribes they were all one communion or body before God. One of the signs that Israel was departing from the true faith was when they worshipped God as independent tribes in places of their own choosing using worship of their own design.
Now that we are in the NT era we are no longer constrained to worship God in one place, but yet our Christian worship is STILL designed to highlight the fact that while there are many members there is only one body in Christ. Christ has determined that he will build and preserve this body, or assembly (ekklesia - church) and that not even the gates of Hell will prevail against it.
This means that the separatist movements that deny the continuing importance of the church are fundamentally misguided and that both the House Church and 'no more church' movements of Christian Pollster George Barna and Family Radio founder Harold Camping are wrong to tell people to separate themselves entirely from the church.
As in the OT when we separate ourselves from the body that Christ is building and put ourselves outside of the structure of accountability, oversight, and shared body life that He gave, we are in grave danger.
Problems in the church are no more reason to abandon the church than the terrible failures and misunderstandings in modern marriages are reason for abandoning that biblical institution!
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I was converted out of paganism and the occult in 1993 and while I was initially Charismatic/Arminian in my theology, I became Reformed and Presbyterian through bible study and the influence of ministries like Ligonier. After teaching in local bible studies, and taking seminary...
