Re: Discipleship
Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:48 am
Hi JR,
I think we agree here.
I won't deprecate or take away the benefit that can come from a larger group setting. But when it comes to true fellowship, I see it as more akin to a "family". I can intimately know my immediate family. I can nearly intimately know a handful of others. But that concept becomes stretched beyond reason when we try to see that in a large group. You just can't have that kind of intimacy in that setting. It's no problem to have several family groups join together for mutual encouragement. There can be good times and benefits from the "large family gathering". But some confuse the larger setting for the intimate one. And all churches are like this, it's just the degrees that are different.
My feeling on the institutional church generally is this; It is like an innoculate--it gives you just enough of the real thing, to keep you from having it.
Regards, Brenden.
I think we agree here.
I won't deprecate or take away the benefit that can come from a larger group setting. But when it comes to true fellowship, I see it as more akin to a "family". I can intimately know my immediate family. I can nearly intimately know a handful of others. But that concept becomes stretched beyond reason when we try to see that in a large group. You just can't have that kind of intimacy in that setting. It's no problem to have several family groups join together for mutual encouragement. There can be good times and benefits from the "large family gathering". But some confuse the larger setting for the intimate one. And all churches are like this, it's just the degrees that are different.
My feeling on the institutional church generally is this; It is like an innoculate--it gives you just enough of the real thing, to keep you from having it.
Regards, Brenden.