The City Church
by Steve Atkerson
A church building near my home has a sign out front that blares, The Church of Atlanta Meets Here. Some of rest of us in Atlanta who also belong to Christ find this rather curious! That sign is based on the notion that there should only be one properly organized church per city — that the only reason for a church to divide are city limits. Any division smaller than a city-wide church is schismatic, they claim.
The word church (ekklesia) was used various ways in the New Testament. Most of these usages fall into two categories. One is what theologians have called the catholic (or universal) church. The other is the local church. The universal church is made up of all believers who have ever lived, throughout time and all over the world. The local church is made up of living believers in one specific locale. Some teach that the proper expression of the local church is something called the city church. What is a city church? How does the city church relate to the house church? To answer this, we need to first understand the universal (catholic) church.
One Catholic Church
The universal church is a biblical reality. There are statements in Scripture that cannot refer to any one particular local church, but rather to the total, collective number of God’s people, throughout all time and in all places (in heaven or still on earth), who belong to Jesus. For instance, Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (KJV). It is a fact that some local churches have gone out of existence. This promise of the church’s perpetuity was not made to any specific local church, but rather to the church as a whole.
The reality of the catholic church is also reflected in Romans 12:5, “in Christ we who are many form one body” (NIV). Further, Ephesians 1:22 states that God the Father gave Christ as “head over all things to the church” (NASV). Colossians 1:18 reinforces this idea in stating that Jesus is “head of the body, the church.” Christ is the Head and the church universal is His body. Thus, there is but one universal church, one body of Christ. (Because of past abuses of the universal church concept, some prefer to refer to such examples as generic uses of the word church.)
The universal church consists of the totality of all believers. It is all those whose names are listed in the Lamb’s Book of Life; all who are enrolled in heaven (Heb 12:22-23). Death separates the saints below from the saints above, and yet we are one company, one church.
The universal church has never yet held a plenary meeting. Many of its members have already passed into glory, many have not been born yet, and those living on earth today are scattered to the four winds. This gathering will occur at some point in the future, after time as we know it has ceased. This gathering is alluded to in various hymns: “Oh with that yonder sacred throng we at his feet may fall” or “When the role is called up yonder I’ll be there.” By all accounts it will be an out of this world experience.
The universal church has no external earthly organization. There is no biblical evidence that the followers of Christ, after the dispersion of the original church at Jerusalem, ever acted together as one externally organized society. Thus, in the sense of having no over-arching, human, earthly organization, it is invisible.
The universal church could be compared to the names listed in a phone book. Many names are listed in a directory. They all have one thing in common: telephones. They are the Who’s Who of the dialing world. Yet those people listed do not all act together in any organized way. So it is with the universal church on earth. Each believer is listed in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Each has Christ. Yet they are not organized together outwardly in any earthly way.
The bond of the universal church is the internal bond of love. This supernatural love has practical expression: Paul had a burden for the needs of the local Jerusalem church and took up an offering from throughout the Roman world to assist them. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. We feel keenly the mistreatment of our Chinese brothers and sisters because they are in the same family; we are in the same church. Romans 12:5 reminds us that “In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” 1 Corinthians 12 reveals each one is a part of the body of Christ and that “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (12:26-27).
The universal church has recognizable, supernaturally gifted ministers. Ephesians 4:11-12 says that Christ “gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ” (NASV). Such gifted people can certainly be found as members of local, organized churches, but their gifting is from the Holy Spirit and their calling often is to the church universal, not necessarily just one local church. Such men minister locally but often have a burden globally. Examples include Paul, Barnabas, and Apollos. As John Wesley said, “I look upon all the world as my parish.”1 Such ministers think globally and act locally.
In sum, the universal church is the whole company of those who are saved by Christ. It is the collective set of all the redeemed in Christ, the entire household of faith. The universal church is made up of the citizens of the New Jerusalem. The existence of the universal church is expressed thusly in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” The next time someone asks you what church you belong to, you can honestly answer by asking in return, “Is there more than one?”
Many Local Churches
Even though there is clearly only one church universal, the New Testament also makes mention of multiple churches (plural) throughout various regions (Ga 1:2, Re 1:4) or to distinct churches in different cities (Ac 13:1, 1Th 1:1). If there were groups of believers meeting in two different places, the Bible refers to them as two separate churches. This leads us to another use of the word church, the local church. The local church is a subset of the church universal.
Jesus said that if a brother is caught in sin, and refuses to repent, one of the steps in the restoration process is to “tell it to the church” (Mt 18:17). It was the local church, not the universal church, to which Jesus made reference. It is the local church that has the authority to expel sinful members, conduct regular meetings, have recognized elders, and be organized. None of this is true of the universal church.
Donald Guthrie wrote that "the initial idea of the church was of local communities of believers meeting together in one place . . . the importance of the community idea in the New Testament cannot be over-stressed."2 According to the New Bible Dictionary, "An ekklesia was a meeting or an assembly . . . church is not a synonym for 'people of God'; it is rather an activity of the 'people of God.’”3 Similarly, someone once quipped that birds fly, fish swim, and churches meet. The idea is, “If it don’t meet, it ain’t a local church!”
So, there is the universal church and the local church. Now then: What is the proper expression of the local church? Is it the house church or the city church?
1. The City-Wide Local Church.
Some hold that the proper expression of the local church is the organized city church, made up of multiple home fellowships networked together and that all meet together corporately. City church advocates argue that there is rightly only one organized church per city. It is further argued that this one city church should hold regular meetings for all the believers in that one town to attend.
Ultimately, any so-called house “churches” would really be more like neighborhood fellowship groups, or semi-autonomous cell churches, all in submission to the mother (city) church. In practice, it would not be far different from a big Baptist church that has its members divided up into scores of Sunday School classes. Under the ideal city church scheme, no subset fellowship in any city is supposed to be autonomous, not any house church, not any of the Baptist churches, not the Presbyterian Church, not the Pentecostal assemblies. All are supposed to be united together under the larger organized umbrella of the one city church. City church meetings are said to be the proper venue for 1 Corinthians 14 participatory gatherings, not house churches. City church gatherings would seem to be the correct forum to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Only the city church would have the proper jurisdiction for disciplining a brother or sister. If the organized city church theory is correct, it leaves the individual house “church” with absolutely no scriptural direction whatsoever as to what it is supposed to do when assembled, or why it should even exist.
On what do they base their belief in the organized city church? One basis for the city church model are those instances in the New Testament where only one church is mentioned in a particular city. For instance, Revelation 1:4 refers to the “churches” (plural) in the province of Asia, and then deals with “the church” (singular) in each of seven cities in that province (2:1, 8, 12, 18, etc.). Adding fuel to the city-wide church fire is the fact that the New Testament never specifically refers to “churches” (plural) within the same city. The situation in Corinth might be presented as a prime example of the city church model.
The Case In Corinth
The Greeting. The salutation contained in 1 Corinthians 1:2 mentions “the church of God in Corinth.” This greeting suggests that there was only one church in Corinth, not many churches. The city church theory holds that there is only supposed to be one church in any city, and it is to be an organized entity with its own government and leaders and meetings.
Church Discipline. In 1 Corinthians 5:4-5, Paul dealt with the immoral brother who needed discipline. He wrote, “When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan” (NIV). Paul clearly wrote as if there was an assembling together of the whole church there in Corinth, of all the believers together in the same place.
The Lord’s Supper. 1 Corinthians 11b reveals that there were abuses of the Lord’s Supper in Corinth. There were deep class divisions. The rich evidently preferred not to eat with the poor, so they plotted to arrive early at the place of meeting. By the time that the poor finally got there, perhaps after work, the rich had already dined. No food was left. The nature of this abuse of the Lord’s Supper could not have happened unless they all, rich and poor, were together in the same church, meeting in the same location. They clearly were not meeting in different places in Corinth for the Lord’s Supper. The rich avoided the poor by eating at a different time, not in a different place.
The Participatory Meeting. The setting of the participatory meeting also implies a city church meeting. For instance, 1 Corinthians 14:23 states that “if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (NIV). The KJV is even clearer: “If therefore the whole church be come together into one place.”
Elders of the City. Advocates of the city church feel that it is the city church as a whole that is to have elders, not necessarily each house church. Indeed, how can the typical house church realistically produce multiple elders? Going beyond the Corinthian example, advocates of the city church would point to Titus 1:5, “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you might set in order what remains, and appoint elders in every city as I directed you” (NASB). They see in this a mandate for a presbytery of city church elders, not house church elders. Some are even calling for the rise of a ruling bishop and apostolic fathers to guide the city church.
2. The Local House Church.
Others argue that the organized house church is the proper biblical expression of the local church, not any city-wide church. There is the church universal on one hand and then the local house church on the other hand. There is the macro church and a micro church, but no metro church.
How can the various house church texts be reconciled to championed city church texts? Arguably, any occurrences of the word church, apart from references to the universal church, refer to a group of believers who actually did all manage to meet together in one place for regular church assemblies. Certainly starting out fresh in a new city there would have been only one meeting place, but as the number of believers grew, so would the number of meeting places, and thus the number of churches within the same city. It was never intended for there to be only one house church meeting per city in perpetuity.
In other words, if the New Testament writers spoke of the church (singular) in a particular city, it was simply because there only happened to be a single fellowship, one meeting place, at that time in history, in that city. According to Mark Galli, the editor of Christian History magazine, “In A.D. 100, Christians numbered only about 7,000, a mere .0034 percent of the Roman Empire.”4 It is not surprising that there would have been only one congregation per city in those days. Yet over time, each initial church plant was expected to eventually multiply meeting places and so become multiple organized churches in that city rather than remaining only one house church.
How big was the church at Corinth? However big it was, all its members were evidently able to assemble together in one place to hold a plenary participatory meeting, all celebrate the Lord’s Supper with each other, and corporately practice church discipline. Yet it was still only one single house church. In his letter to the Romans, written from Corinth, Paul wrote, “Gaius, host to me and to the whole church, greets you” (Ro 16:23, NASV). It seems to have been a very large house church, but a house church nonetheless, because Gaius was able to host the entire church in Corinth.
What is the evidence for the house church as the proper expression of the local church? It is a fact that, with the exception perhaps of Solomon’s portico, every time the New Testament states clearly where a local church regularly met, it was in a private home. As we look out into church history, we see that the early believers continued to meet in private dwellings for the next two hundred years (for as long as the United States has been a nation). Where would this supposed city-wide church have met, if for centuries the primary venue for church meetings was someone’s living room?
G. F. Snyder, in Church Life Before Constantine, wrote that “the New Testament Church began as a small group house church . . . and it remained so until the middle or end of the third century. There are no evidences of larger places of meeting before 300.”5 Those early house churches did grow, and rather than find ever larger places to hold their meetings, they instead started new house churches within the same city. This fact seems to be at odds with the theory of city church as an organized entity. The house churches referred to in the New Testament seem to be genuine, bona fide churches in their own right, not mere cell groups, not just home fellowships.
Those who advocate city church hold that churches ideally ought only to divide because of distance, as defined by city limits (geography). Those who hold to the house church as the correct model for the local church recognize division by geography as true in principle, but see city limits as the wrong boundary. They advocate a different separating factor: the boundaries of a home’s den, of living room floor space, of geography in the sense of square feet rather than square miles. If all the believers can’t all meet into one home, it is time to start a new church. The size of the average living room is the limit.
How are these house church references related to the occasional biblical statements about the church (singular) in a city? Is it really possible that the Bible speaks of “the church” in a certain city simply because there was only one assembly in that city at that time? If there had been several congregations, would it have been more proper to refer to the churches of that city rather than to the church of that city? Consider the case in Rome.
The Case in Rome
Most New Testament epistles do not contain a greeting to “the” church in a certain city. In greeting the believers in Rome, for instance, Paul simply wrote “to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints” (Ro 1:7, NASB). He did not greet “the” church in Rome as such. In fact, the New Testament never refers to “the” church in Rome. Could this be because there was more than one congregation in Rome?
Aquila & Priscilla (Prisca) were a Jewish couple living in Rome. Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote his letter to the believers in Rome, but he knew this couple from back when they had lived in Corinth and Ephesus. Thus, Paul greeted them in his letter when he wrote to the saints in Rome. He wrote, “Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus . . . also greet the church that is in their house” (Ro 16:3-5, NASB).
What is the difference between “all the saints in Rome” (Ro 1:7) and “the church that is in their house” (Ro 16:3-5)? The church that met in the home of Prisca and Aquila was especially singled out for greeting as a separate church, a subset of “all the saints in Rome.” Paul would not have had to specify which church he was greeting unless there was more than one church in Rome. “Greet the church that is in their house” (emphasis mine) as opposed to the churches in other people’s houses in Rome.
There evidently were considerable numbers of believers in Rome, many more than in Corinth, and they met in more than one place each Lord’s Day. For instance, in Romans 16:14 there is a greeting expressed to “Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brothers with them.” Who were the brothers who were “with” them? Likely, the rest of a different church that met with them.
Consider also Romans 16:15, “Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints with them.” Who were the saints who were “with” them? This strongly suggests that these saints were with them in yet another church in Rome, distinct from the ‘brothers’ who met with Asyncritus et al, and also separate from the church that met in the home of Priscilla and Aquila.
A good case can be made that there were at least three separate meeting places for believers in Rome, constituting at least three separate churches. Consider also that Paul only greeted by name those he already knew. Doubtless many other house churches were functioning in Rome that Paul had no personal acquaintance with when he wrote.
The Jerusalem Example: Metro or Micro?
Let us apply all this to the Jerusalem church. The Jerusalem church is one of the few examples where the Bible does refer to only one church in a city (Ac 8:1). Arguably, this is simply because the believers there did all meet together in one place. The church in Jerusalem was indeed a single organized entity. For instance, Acts 2:1 records that “they were all together in one place” (NASB). Acts 6:1-2a states that “the twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples” (NASB).
Unlike Corinth, the Jerusalem church was not a house church at all (though they did eat together in various homes, Ac 2:46). At Pentecost some three thousand (Ac 2:41) were added to the original one hundred and twenty believers (Ac 1:15). Then, Acts 4:4 tell us that “many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.” Luke further informs us, “The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith” (Ac 6:7). The Jerusalem church was a huge church even by today’s standards. It was a mega church!
Where did so many people meet together? Acts 5:12 gives us the answer: “all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.” Solomon’s Colonnade was a huge assembly area, a roof supported by columns at regular intervals, with open sides. It was a portico, or veranda. This was prior to the persecution that later came upon the Jerusalem church and prevented such massive gatherings.
Should we copy the Jerusalem example in our churches today? (If so, it would run parallel to the house church concept). The answer is both yes and no. Under similar circumstances, yes. But their circumstances were unique, and not typical of our circumstances, so practically, normally and effectively, no. Too often the modern church has let this exception become the rule. This situation at Jerusalem was unique for several reasons.
First, the Jerusalem church was the very first church and was in its infancy. It was in the incubator stage. As Harvey Bluedorn pointed out, “There were many things yet to develop. This was a whole new construction project, and we must not confuse the scaffolding and building equipment with the building itself.”6
Second, the Jerusalem church was composed solely of newly converted Jews. As such, they held a deep attachment to the things of the old covenant, including worship in the temple. Again quoting Bluedorn, “The church in Jerusalem was composed only of circumcised Jews who had lived their whole lives under the law and around the temple. They were culturally committed to a way of living under an administrative law which was jurisdictionally about to pass out of existence. They must presently begin the transition of peeling off the immature externally-conforming old covenant culture and at the very same time bringing forward the mature internally-transforming new covenant culture. There were many converted priests who were still zealously attached to the law, hence weak in conscience, hence hindered from maturing in the gospel. Many cultural accommodations were made in Jerusalem which we would not likely even consider today.”7
Third, the church in Jerusalem was instantly confronted with an immense number of converts. Thousands were converted. Many of the converts were religious pilgrims, temporary visitors, who traveled to Jerusalem to observe Passover and Pentecost. Josephus recorded that the population of the city would swell to many times its normal size. Luke put it this way: “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven . . . Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs" (Ac 2:5-11). Eventually these new converts needed to return home. In the interim however, these large numbers needed to be discipled, instructed and grounded in the faith. How does one handle three thousand Jews from many nations suddenly converted in Jerusalem (Ac 2:5-11, 41), and not long after that several thousand more local residents (Ac 4:4)? There were only twelve specially trained and designated apostles!
In order to quickly teach so many new converts, the church had to have big meetings. Thus, “they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching” (Ac 2:42) and met daily in the temple courts (Ac 2:46). This was also the era of their voluntary communalism (Ac 4:32-35), a unique giving in response to this unique training need. It was not repeated as a pattern in the other churches that later came into existence. The norm is micro churches, not mega churches, and the private ownership of property, not communalism.
Just imagine: Thousands of new believers with literally nowhere on earth to get training except right there in Jerusalem. The time available to train them was running out. Eventually they had to go home. Extra ordinary situations call for extra ordinary actions: mass meetings & communalism. If all the Mormons in Salt Lake City turned away from the doctrine of demons and were suddenly born again and brought into a true saving faith in the Lord Jesus, that too would be a unique situation calling for an extra ordinary response by the true church.
These big meetings in the temple courts did not last long, because not only did the pilgrims eventually leave, but even the local residents later left, too, being forced out. Luke records that “a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (Ac 8:1).
Years later, what was left of the Jerusalem church had yet another plenary meeting. This is recorded in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council: “The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them” (Ac 15:12). Luke records that “the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided . . .” (Ac 15:22). This was a greatly truncated church, not thousands of people as before.
(As a side note, the Jerusalem Council itself was also a fairly unique event in that the very nature of the gospel message was being decided. The issue was: “Is faith in Jesus enough, or must people also be circumcised?” The original apostles were still in Jerusalem, and they were the standard, the norm, for doctrine. The false gospel of circumcision needed to be condemned and the true gospel stated and defended. The Twelve were the men who could do just that. They were handpicked and trained by Jesus to represent Him on earth in a special way that no one else has been qualified to do since. It is not that the church in Jerusalem had authority over the other churches. Rather, from the apostles, in conjunction with the Jerusalem church, went forth an authoritative letter condemning the requirement of circumcision.)
Steve Atkerson
Steve lives in Georgia with his wife, Sandra. They have three children, two still at home and one married. Steve graduated from Georgia Tech and worked in industrial electronics before heading off to seminary. After receiving a Master of Divinity degree from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, he served on the pastoral staff of a Southern Baptist Church. After seven years in the traditional pastorate, he resigned to begin working with churches that desire to follow apostolic traditions in their church practice. Since 1990 he has traveled and taught as the Lord opens doors of opportunity. Steve is an elder at a local house church, is president of NTRF, edited Toward A House Church Theology, authored both The Practice of the Early Church: A Theological Workbook and The Equipping Manual, and is editor of and a contributing author to both Ekklesia: To The Roots of Biblical House Church Life and House Church: Simple, Strategic, Scriptural.
