Scrub teaching, the communion service, and intercessory prayer, as inappropriate, from public viewing because Church of God – ekklesia – business is something intimate. When members of the church come together it is not for public consumption. It has to make one wonder what kind of accountability Christian leaders can report when the people they lead are at a distance from the appointed worship leader. They are distant from the Christ that they are naming, so it is no surprise that especially since the covid19 pandemic struck church is a public deal with most of the church’s valuables remaining unidentified due to private preferences dominating the flow of grace from Christ to the Church, whose focus can never escape the unity that belongs to Christ’s body.

My book and my second-rate commentary for sale or free

It’s really does not matter whether people are selling or giving stuff away.  Mass distribution of God’s word is abominable because the follow up to casting out the gospel net requires a response which ideally ends in conversion, baptism, and reception into a local congregatio.  Teaching also requires the questions of people who are learning all the examination of what people are getting from reading the Scriptures. Without questions and contributions coming from the audience the essential gifts of Christ to the Church are superfluous.

Gifts to the church

And He 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; [FOR HOW LONG?] until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, [TO WHAT END?] to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. [WHAT IS IN IT FOR US?] As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Eph 4:11-16, NASB

In the snares of Satan

Churches have been manipulated into doing big public things that can only properly be associated with capitalism or Mammon, to use a biblical term, and they dare to call what they do “Church”.  If you want to see how obscene Western Christianity has become just spend an hour watching programs on TV pitching for money to help the poor in foreign lands, while on the streets of America, while in the congregation of those same “churches” there are impoverished souls who do not seem to matter.  They actually think that the righteousness of Christ has nothing to do with corruption in a political system or blatantly criminal behavior by elected officials.   Man! Has the devil got them! Some of these entities, trapped by the devil in discrimination and greed, are not even churches. They are loose corporate entities run by individuals in partnership with other individuals to enrich themselves. This is a well known fact.

Bodyworks the world cannot appreciate

In a local congregation there is an inevitable personal contact with all who come through the doors.  TV and radio can only hope that people who tune in will contact the programmers.  There are few operators who are engaged with the believer and the unbeliever in biblical ways.  The Church is Christ’s body in focused activity with the Head at centre stage and in first place in every situation. The world cannot understand much less absorb the proceedings, even when the proceeding is a ritual (Communion, for example).

Church business beyond the grasp of outsiders

As long as preachers and teachers think that speaking for 30, 45 minutes or an hour and getting an amen or even a nay-men from the audience something is responsible Christ and the apostles would not recognize the assembly. The point of teaching is to facilitate change in at least four essential ways: reproof, correction, training in righteousness, and equipping for good works (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NASB).

Church business that never happens in public or private

If somone is going to offer reproof, correction, training and equipping apart for what the Scriptures teach people will be at risk of being pulled in every direction. We should expect a biblical precedent in practice or plain teaching, and anything short of that less should get our nod. Sure enough people can walk into our service from off the street and see what we are doing, but they have no right to be sitting at the table with the same provo6leges as those who have confessed Chirst as Saviour. Nor can the instruction in Christian thought from a pastor mean anything to a person off the street. If believers want to keep hearing the same things over and over, receive no experience of growth in grace, then we can keep doing the public monologue. People bitten by the kingdom of heaven are curious, they search for answers. The discoveries are public, written in Scripture, for all to see, so let the two-way edification proceed in the privacy of the environment between Christ and his disciples.