Will the Church of the Future Be Completely Different to Today?

A new kind of church is coming. A church that can meet anywhere, homes, cafes, or even surfing together by the sea. A church that has no pastors or preachers. A church that is based on the first churches in the Bible with less emphasis on preaching and a greater sense of the miraculous.

The first churches met in people's homes. Acts 2:46,47. They continued daily in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. The first Christians were all Jews. The temple wasn't somewhere that Jews went to have regular meetings. That would have been a place where large numbers of people gathered. The temple was for preaching the gospel to large numbers of people who weren't Christians. The main meetings of the church were 'breaking bread from house to house.' We have made breaking bread into a religious rite called Holy Communion. The vicar puts a piece of bread into your hand and says, 'The body of Christ which gives you eternal life.' At that time bread and wine were ordinary food. The Christians simply had meals together.

What would these first church meetings have been like? There was no printing press. There would not have been the box of hymn books and the box of Bibles that is associated with a modern church service in a home group. Some of the men would have had rabbinic training and some people in the group would know quite large parts of the Jewish Bible off by heart. It would have been possible for some people to recite parts of the Bible from memory. 'Let the word of God dwell richly within you, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.' Colossians 3:16. A psalm is a written prayer from the Jewish Bible so its possible this verse refers to reciting a Psalm from memory or it could simply be referring to psalming, worshipping God in your own words but similar to the psalms. It wouldn't have been like a Bible Study. No one would say, 'We're doing the first chapter of Romans tonight.' The nearest Bible would have been a scroll in the temple and the Bible wasn't divided into chapters. It's more likely that you would share a particular verse of the Scriptures that was on your heart. 'Suzie said something last night and it really reminded me of this Psalm. This is a word of encouragement for Suzie.'

Churches in communist countries didn't have Bibles. Richard Wurmbrand was a pastor in Romania in the sixties. He was asked how many Bibles people had in Romania. Would each Christian have a New Testament? He replied that each church would have a New Testament. The New Testament is about one fifth of the Bible and this implies that one Bible would be shared by five churches. He described church meetings at that time that didn't have much Bible teaching but concentrated on hysterical prayer. One of the very first church services is described in 1Corinthians 14:26-33. Each person would come with a psalm, a teaching or a revelation. These would be shared one at a time. There was an emphasis on the supernatural gifts. A full list of spiritual gifts is given in 1Corinthians 12:4-11. Prophecy could mean lots of things. It was possible to prophecy a future event. Agabus prophesied that there would be a famine. Acts 11:27-30. The Christians were able to plan for this and collect money. On another occasion Agabus warned Paul that if he went to Jerusalem he would be imprisoned. Acts 21:7-14. Paul went to Jerusalem anyway, in spite of people begging him not to. Prophecy can concern a future event but can also be a word of encouragement or a prayer. A word of knowledge means supernatural knowledge of another person's problem or life event that you couldn't possibly have known about, particularly in the context of praying together in church. People in our church have given words such as, 'l'm getting a smell of dog food' and the lady had been on a diet that involved eating dog food, or, 'You've got something in your bedroom that you have to get rid of.' The gift of discernment is an ability to see what is happening in the spirit world. I have experienced this gift while praying for people who are mentally ill. It's important to be able to see what is happening at a supernatural level. 'Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness and then angels came and attended him. I pray that the devil will leave your son and angels will come and attend him.' My prayer was answered. An extremely disturbed young man, who his family were very worried about, was released from a secure unit after only a few weeks. There would have been an emphasis on healing and miracles. That's an emphasis we seem to have lost.

Emerging churches pop up anywhere. Meeting in someone's house on a Thursday morning for Bible study and pizza, as one group does in Rotherham. A church made up of people who surf together on a beach in Spain. BBC News recently interviewed someone who had been baptised there. Informal church can happen outside of a church building. Informal church doesn't need a church pastor. We may eventually be forced to meet this way as many churches can not afford either a church building or a full time pastor. But in doing so we may rediscover the magic of the original Christian church.