Jacob Ninan
Jesus told His disciples that He would build His church, and that the powers of hell would not be able to overpower it (Matt.16:18). Mostly everyone would agree that He formed this body called the 'church' on the Day of Pentecost, after His death which brought in the new covenant between God and man, and His resurrection which demonstrated His sinless perfection as a Man and His essential being as God. Many people are aware that this church is not a building, even though many others continue to think of it like that. The spiritual body of Christ is the church that operates here on earth as His representative. Becoming a part of the church is not through signing an application form but by experiencing His salvation in person.
In the early history of the church, believers met in different houses, and the main parts of their meetings were to listen to the 'word' from the apostles, pray and to 'break bread' together (Acts.2:42). The books of the New Testament had not been written yet, and so they had to rely on the word brought by the apostles who had been with Jesus.
One of the major problems that the early church faced was the insistence from some Jews who had become Christians that in order to be saved it was necessary to be circumcised. Paul carried out a major battle with these 'Judaisers' to establish that salvation was by a gift of grace from God which was received through repentance from sin and believing in Jesus as Saviour. Nothing else was required. We don't know if these Judaisers left the apostles and formed another 'church' with emphasis on circumcision! Sad to say, such a tendency developed and has stayed on till now!
By the time the last of the early apostles passed away, all the books of the New Testament were written and copies on scrolls were being passed around among the churches. One would have imagined that since the written word of God was now available for reference, all the questions of doctrine and practice would be settled. But then began the problem of interpretation, and since then no two people have been able to agree completely on every point!
Moving fast forward we come to the Roman Catholic Church just before the Protestant Reformation. The church had become doctrinally and morally corrupt, having mixed religion and political power together. The ordinary people were not allowed to read the Bible and only the priests were allowed to interpret doctrine. One of the practices at this time was the sale of 'indulgences' by which people could buy up forgiveness for sins. For Martin Luther who was a scholarly monk in the church this was the last straw. He had just come to see that according to the Bible salvation was only through faith and not anything we did. He finally made up his mind to stand openly against the church, and it resulted in what we now know as the Reformation.
This was a huge step forward towards getting back to the blueprint God had for the church. But what we need to see here is that this step was not really complete in many respects. The reformed church had carried with it a lot of baggage from the Roman Catholic Church. Further reformation was still needed to go forward in many aspects of doctrine and practice.
Then came the Puritans in England in the 16th and 17th centuries saying that the church in England had not been reformed sufficiently from the Roman Catholic practices. They emphasised purity in worship and personal piety as being necessary characteristics of a church. Other groups such as the Quakers and Seekers came forward insisting that individuals needed to be led personally by the Holy Spirit, with a tendency to pay more attention to direct revelations than to the written word in the Bible.
The Brethren movement started in the early part of the 19th century which emphasised going back to the pattern of the church as given in the New Testament. These included sole dependence on the Bible for all matters of doctrine and practice, considering every believer as brothers and sisters in Christ, abolition of the special class of clergy, freedom for any believer to pray or share from the word in the 'assembly' (replacing the use of the word 'church' which had come to mean a building), plurality of elders (at least two) replacing pastors and priests in the leadership, 'breaking of bread' instead of 'holy communion', baptism only for believers, etc. This movement took a strong hold in India, especially Kerala.
The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 in London by William and Catherine Booth with a focus on holiness brought forward from the Methodists. The additional emphasis was on alleviating poverty and other social evils such as drinking.
The pentecostal movement began in the early part of the 20th century with the 'outpouring' of the Holy Spirit in the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, with people speaking in tongues, and experiencing healing through prayer. This spread all around the world including India. Even though doctrinally the movement accorded respect and submission to the written word of God, 'experiences' also began to get recognised as being important.
The charismatic movement hit the scene around 1960, with people in mainline protestant churches as well as the Roman Catholic Church going after spiritual gifts of tongues, healing, prophecy, etc. These people who had stood against the pentecostal movement so far began to work with them, the difference being that instead of leaving their churches and joining pentecostal churches, they chose to remain within their churches. Those who had such experiences and those who wanted to have them began also to meet apart in addition to their regular church programmes, to cultivate their charismatic experiences. They became more 'free' from their church forms, and their churches also became more tolerant towards such experiences.
The Jesus movement broke out in the west coast of the US in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. This coincided in time period with the counter-cultural movement called the hippies. Though this movement had a short life, one of its biggest impacts was in changing the style of church music by introducing the guitar and drum set into it. Worship in the form of dance was another innovation.
Many other church movements have come in across the world over time and made their impact on doctrines and practice. Heretical groups have also come and exposed the gullibility of Christians who were not familiar with what the Bible said. We can see that some of these movements came up as a reaction to the lack in the existing churches – to emphasise a missing part of doctrine or to correct an error.
One common aspect of all these movements was that even when they tried to bring out something they found lacking in other churches, none of them was completely balanced themselves. In emphasising certain aspects, they all tended to leave out some other aspects which were important to other groups. Another point is that while the pioneers of many of these movements started with insight and understanding, many of their followers usually ended up following only certain external forms and practices.
If we look at our own church groups and others around us one thing we find is the variety in emphases. We will be naive if we assume that our church group is the most balanced and ignore the emphases other churches are standing for. We have to recognise that God, in His wisdom, has raised up some people to bring out certain aspects which the church has neglected. Or, even if someone has gone and overemphasised some points and lost the balance in the process, it would be good for us to take notice and see if we have missed those points altogether!
How sad that someone who wants to bring emphasis to a certain point has to leave his church and start another one! The wise thing for all of us is to be willing to learn, look at what the other churches are standing for and make necessary changes in our churches. Instead of developing an 'us' and 'them' mentality, if only we could recognise that we are all but different parts of the body of Christ, every one of us could benefit, and God's name could be glorified better! However, people being what we are, that is probably too much to expect! But let those who are able to think, think! "Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man"" (Eph.4:13).
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