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Historical Perspectives on the Small Groups (01)
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Paul Jang
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2008-03-24 15:23:26, hit : 2,819 |
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Historical Perspectives on the Small Groups
For nearly two thousand years Christians have been meeting together in small groups (Becker 1993b, 13). Tracing the history of small groups among which Christianity won adherents in the age of the ancient church (100 AD-590 AD: Park 1970, 10), most of them had arisen around the intellectuals whether for Christianity or for anti-Christianity. During the times Christian leaders focused on two intentions: propagation of the Gospel of Christ in faith (Latourette 1978, vol. 1, 114) and defence against the heretical cults. Because most of the Christian movements aimed at the defence against the cults, those had been taken place around the Christian intellectuals. At that time, the Christian leaders made much of the doctrinal arguments in order to defense their faith (Latourette 1978, vol. 1. 121).
As the age of Apostles, so the Christian small groups would have meetings in houses through at least second century (Barrett 1986, 21). It must clearly show that the Christian small groups were identified with the house churches. In the Martydom of Justin, chapter 2, Justin told the prefect that the Christians do not all meet in the very same place. He said, "I live above one Martinus, at the Timiotinia Bath; and during the whole time (and I am now living in Rome for the second time), he was unaware of any other meeting than his." (Filson 1939, 107, cited by Barrett 1986, 21).
The Clementine Recognitions (10:71) refer to the generosity of Theophilus of Antioch, who "with all eagerness of desire consecrated the great palace of his house under the name of a church (Filson 1939, 107, cited by Barrett 1986, 21).
Because most Christians were in closely knit groups under the influence of the persecution at that time and of the self-righteous pride as a distinct people (the chosen people by God) the groups were not popularly opened to outsiders (Latourette vol. 1, 1978, 128). Therefore, during most part of ancient history of the Christianity the churches had existed as the form of small groups in homes or basements like the Catacombs because of persecution (McBride 1993, 19).
Lois Barrett insisted that Christians began building sanctuaries for worship, patterned after the Roman basilica by the latter part of the third century (Barrett 1978, 22). John W. Miller pointed out that the house church has almost been necessary to exist any more, and wrote as follows:
To share in Christ no longer meant to united in fellowship with a small group of Christ's people. Now all that was necessary was to come to the bishop, listen to his voice, and receive the sacraments. As ever larger numbers of people joined the church after its alliance with the Roman state, this could be done far more conveniently in large sanctuaries than in house. With this shift in understanding as to what it meant to be a Christian, the house church had become obsolete (cited by Barrett 1978, 22).
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Introduction
Ch Growth 