The extent to which the Church has been "Greekified" is extreme once you really get into it and study the history. It has affected almost everything. For example: the modus operandi whereby one man gets up in front of the congregation, in a building specifically reserved for this purpose, and lectures (read: "preaches") to a crowd with no interaction, discussion, or challenge between "preacher/priest" and "congregation" is Greek. It's modeled on what took place at Greek philosophical academies, as well as the practice of the itinerate philosopher (Peripatetics), which was popular in the Greek/Roman world of the early church. The Peripatetics were Aristotelian.
 

If the Apostle Paul were invited into one of our typical church meetings and saw only one man give an oration patterned after the Greek philosophers of his day, with absolutely no interaction with the "laymen," Paul would demand to know "What's going on here?" This modern pattern bears no resemblance to the New Testament pattern, although it is unwittingly patterned after ancient Greek itinerant moralists. The "sermon" is an unscriptural tradition, imported from Greco-Roman paganism. Some preachers, of course, fail to meet even the standards of the Greek philosophers. Their "preaching" is pure entertainment.
 

Many would point to the "sermons" in the book of Acts as support for the modern practice, e.g. Acts 20:7:
 

• And  upon the  first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread,  Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until  midnight.

The word, "preached" is, dialegomai: it's a "dialogue" not a "monologue." Dialegomai means: "to say thoroughly, that is, discuss (in argument or exhortation): - dispute, reason (with), speak.". It comes from the word "di" which means "a combining form meaning 'two', 'double'. Do you really believe Paul preached a sermon that lasted 12 hours? What he did was dialogue with them. They "talked" together.

Dialegomai is also translated as "reasoned" in Acts 17:2, where Paul "reasoned" in the synagogue out of the scriptures. Paul "reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath" (Acts 18:4,19). In church, the preacher doesn't "reason" with anybody, but simply talks with no chance of interaction with those in the audience. Dialegomai is also translated as "disputed" in Acts 17:17, where Paul "disputed in the synagogue", and in Acts 19:18 where he was "disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God." In Church, the minister or elder or priest does not give anyone the chance to "dispute" or "question" him. 

 

There simply was no "preaching" or "sermon" as we popularly conceive it today. When we talk to our neighbor about the things of God, we engage in "official and professional instruction" as priest-kings of Christ! The gates of hell are assaulted and overcome by our "informal discussion". When we get together with other believers, friends, family, etc, and discuss, dispute, argue, exhort, teach, encourage, learn, pray, and share a common meal, THAT is the Church. Modern churches have replaced the discussion and animated conversation of the New Testament with "sermons," an invention of the Greeks, and a man-made tradition.
 

We should always be conscious of Christ's Presence "where two or three are gathered in My Name." Whenever we obey the command to assemble together for praising God, Scripture reading and study, discussion, exhortation and comfort, prayer and singing, and remembering the Lord's death in the communal meal, we are clearly engaging in a very special activity. It is, indeed, Sacramental.
 

I once ran across a paper by a Reformed theologian named Paul Fahey called, "Why Do We Gather as a Church?" The subtitle was "The Bible's Answer Compared to Modern Practice." I agreed with it (an unusual occurrence to be sure!) to such an amazing degree that I copied it. I'm glad I did because as far as I can tell it is no longer posted on the net. I've wondered if maybe he caught too much flak for it and had to take it down. So here it is!

 

Notice the conclusion:

 

We have seen the reasons for gathering, and what the New Testament says we should do when we do gather. Should we not question the practice of going to a building which we call church, attending without any form of involvement or participation (apart from singing en masse which does not even include choice of song), sitting and listening to one man for a considerable time, and following a carefully prepared liturgy or meeting structure? The apostles would find such procedure astonishing. It has no support in the Bible and fails to train people in righteousness to the degree we should expect...

 

It "fails to train people in righteousness to the degree we should expect" because Greek philosophy has co-opted and corrupted the Church, which was grafted onto the root of Abraham. The true church (yes, it DOES exist) is STILL grafted onto the root of Abraham. The root of Plato grows into a completely different kind of tree. The institutional, visible, church that you see today, be it Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, with a few exceptions of varying degrees here and there, is grafted onto the root of Plato. In my opinion, the two systems - Abrahamic and Platonic - are diametrically opposed, and no true integration is possible.

 

Following are some of my thoughts copy-and-pasted from a discussion on Xanga.

 

Now, for those who might still be feeling some warm fuzzies for this or that established church, consider the following please:

There is no difference, absolutely no difference, between the "Church" and any major corporation. It owns assets, in other words, it has a stake in the world system. It has corporate structure; the governing structure is from the top down (that is necessary because it owns assets that have to be managed. If there are no assets to be managed then top-down hierarchical structure is not necessary and Jesus' teaching of the upside-down Kingdom wherein the greatest is the servant of all actually becomes possible). There are good people and bad people in it, just as there are in any major organization. The way to advance in the "Church" is the same as climbing the corporate ladder anywhere else. The politics are the same. It could be argued that the politics in the church are worse because in order to advance one has to be "spiritual". This leads to all kinds of deception and hypocrisy. Statistically, the divorce rate is the same, the suicide rate is the same, the drug and alcohol abuse rates are the same, and the sexual abuse rates are the same as the culture-at-large. This goes for Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodox. What does this tell you? There IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE "CHURCH" AND THE "WORLD".

Secondly, to become a pastor in the established church is akin to a death sentence. The following is taken from: The Almost Inevitable Ruin of Every Minister...and How to Avoid It. 

 

Keep in mind that this article was written by a seminary professor to try to help his students NOT be ruined. I think THAT is an exercise in futility, but that's my opinion. If you're interested, go read it, it might be an eye-opener for you.

Once when a Southern Baptist denominational executive [NOTICE - "DENOMINATIONAL EXECUTIVE"!!!] was on the Midwestern Seminary campus in the late 1990s, he asserted that statistics show that for every twenty men who enter the ministry, by the time those men reach age sixty-five, only one will still be in the ministry.

Despite all the commitment with which they began the race, despite all the investment of time and money to prepare, despite the years of spent in service, despite the cost of retooling and redirecting their lives, nearly all will leave the ministry. Some will opt out for health reasons. Some will wash out in their private lives. Some will bow out, realizing they had misread the call of God. Some will bail out because the stress is so great. Some will be forced out by their churches. Some will walk out from sheer frustration and a sense of failure. And if you haven't given serious thought to leaving the ministry, you haven't been in it very long. Despite the fact that no one goes into the ministry to be a casualty, the ruin of almost every minister, it seems, is inevitable. For in addition to the high percentage of those who leave the ministry, sometimes it appears that of those who do stay in the ministry, many of them have been ruined in other ways. They may get ruined by money, either by the desire for it or the lack of it. They make far too many choices based upon getting more money, or else they smolder in their attitude toward the church because they don't get paid enough.

Here are specific "ruins" the author deals with:

1) Sex - "25 to 35 percent of ministers [are] involved in inappropriate sexual behavior"
2) Power
3) Pride
4) Cynicism

In spite of this professor's efforts and his applications and teachings from the pastoral epistles, only one in twenty will avoid "ruin" of one kind or another. What does this tell you?

 

Argument: The Church is made up of sinful humans and so therefore we should not expect a "perfect" Church. "All have sinned..."

 

Response: You'll get no argument from me concerning all have sinned, I know that first hand as well as anybody, however, it misses my point. I can see how that could happen. I will try to be clearer. I'm not suggesting that an "uncorrupted" church is going to have only sinless people in it. What I'm talking about is the structure of the organization. The post by Aplatypus that started this thread included a description of the Real Church:

 

"...a weary adventurer happens upon a hut and the kindly inhabitants take him in, feed and clothe him, and give him a place to rest."

and

"...the Real Church is comprised of those little huts scattered around the world housing those who are God's people..."

 

As he also said, some of those huts are inside the established church, many are not. What I was suggesting was not that the Church is corrupted because of sinful people, but that people are corrupted by the false church, a church that is organized as a top down hierarchy, that owns and manages assets, that is structured exactly like any corporation, and that by its very structure encourages deception and hypocrisy. The examples and statistics I gave were meant to illustrate that the worldly structure of the church encourages and in some cases perhaps causes the ruin of those who participate in her in exactly the same way as people are ruined by the world system, which leads to my position that the established church is part and parcel of the world system. People fall prey to sex, money, and power in the church just like they do everywhere else. It's hard to see any difference. Now that doesn't mean that there are not true believers participating in the church system that don't get ruined - there are. But there are true believers participating in other worldly institutions that don't get ruined by them. I'm saying that there is no difference between the established church and any other organization/institution.

When I spoke of the uncorrupted church I did not mean that the members were sinless. What I meant was the structure of the thing is uncorrupted. Those little huts are structured just like God intended. One of the metaphors is that, taken together in totality, they are a body. I like to say, an organism, not an organization. They are also spoken of as a temple, but notice that the language that is used qualifies the concept of an actual building - "...you are LIVING stones built together..." The Real Church is an organism. It is structured organically, and everything is exactly backwards from the way it is in the world. The least is the greatest, the poorest is the richest, and power is made perfect in weakness. It seems to me that the example and teachings of Jesus are diametrically opposed to a church that owns assets, and is governed by a top down hierarchy - one that employs "denominational executives."

 

The following is copy-and-pasted from personal correspondence on the subject of the modern Church:

 

Thank you for your candor in telling me about the recent problems in your church. My heart goes out to you. Believe me when I say I know how painful situations like that are for those sincere-minded believers that are involved - such as yourself. I respect your integrity in dealing with the situation and I pray that God works something good out of it. That is His promise - that He works all things for good to those that love Him - and you are one of those who love Him, it is evident in your writing and in your response to this very tough and painful situation. You have already indicated that good things have come out of it and I do not deny it - I EXPECT it!

 

Unfortunately, this problem is not an anomaly. It happens all the time. In part it happens because bad people are what they are - it would happen anywhere. It could happen just as easily in a home church environment as in an institutional church setting. It happens in families, personal relationships, in the business and corporate world - everywhere.

 

Here are some thoughts on the matter. Please remember, I am not attacking you or your church. It's not personal, I could just as easily be commenting on the little Lutheran church down the street, or about the Catholic Church that's a half-mile from my house.

 

The problem is that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I know that your church government involves elders, deacons, maybe assistant pastors as well as the head pastor. There may be power-sharing built into the by-laws of your church, there usually is. Mechanisms are in place so that if you have a situation like what you have experienced there are ways that it can be dealt with and corrected. That's good. It's an acknowledgement of the propensity of human beings to abuse power. "Power" can be thought of in different aspects. For instance, some men are not motivated by money, they're motivated by glory - that is, they're motivated by being the center of attention, by having people look to them for advice and counsel and teaching etc. This influence over other people is power. Some men are motivated by money. They might not care about accumulating money for themselves; they just like to have control of it. The power of money is not in ownership, it's in control. So a head pastor might live a very frugal and commendable lifestyle, not having much for himself, but he actually controls a huge budget - sometimes millions of dollars - and that is what he gets off on. The ability to direct the flow of money - that's power. And of course, there are the women. Some guys are motivated by sex, whether explicit - as in illicit affairs - or implicit - inappropriate emotional attachments, wrong fantasizing, manipulation, etc. Almost all abuses of power involve 1 or more of these three things. You said that there was more to the situation than what you could explain. I'm betting the "more" involves one or more of these 3 categories.

 

Now the institutional church is more or less set up like any secular corporation. There's the CEO (head pastor) who may have more or less control, depending on the by-laws that define the purview of vice presidents (assistant pastors), the board (elders, deacons etc), and the shareholders (members of the congregation). It's a hierarchical structure; the higher you go the more power there is, albeit with different schemes for sharing that power. The problems that come with power are inherent in the structure of the thing. That's what I mean by "systemically corrupt." For instance, if a man is motivated by glory, he desires the office of head pastor, because that gives him the most face time in front of people. So the way the thing is structured guarantees that the office will, in and of itself, attract a disproportionate number of people who are the EXACT WRONG people to be in that office. 

 

Be all that as it may, I know that many - maybe even most - clergy get into the profession for all the right reasons - they want to help people, they want to advance the Kingdom of God on the earth, they feel that God is calling them. Bravo! Yet, they become casualties. They succumb to glory, money, or women. Or they don't fall to any of these; they just get burned out. They get forced out for any number of reasons. They become disillusioned, cynical, tired. Don Whitney, who is a Southern Baptist (your denomination) seminary professor and pastor, writes in his paper, The Almost Inevitable Ruin of Every Minister...and How to Avoid It. 

 

"Once when a Southern Baptist denominational executive was on the Midwestern Seminary campus in the late 1990s, he asserted that statistics show that for every twenty men who enter the ministry, by the time those men reach age sixty-five, only one will still be in the ministry."

 

Notice  - "denominational executive." Is this what Jesus and the apostles had in mind? Secondly, there is a casualty rate of 19 to 1. I would call that cannon fodder. Even though Brother Whitney is writing this paper as a solution to the problem, and he gives good advice, he states,

​

"Whenever I see a group of graduates at our commencement exercises each May, clustered together for the final time before leaving the seminary, I feel somewhat as I imagine General Pickett must have felt when he sent his troops from Seminary Ridge up toward Cemetery Ridge in what he knew would be a bloody charge at Gettysburg. I can almost see one taking a bullet to the heart, a second decimated by grapeshot, a third torn in two by a cannonball. And I see nearly all, in one way or another, though they started well and were well-intentioned, being ruined and falling in the field. It's inevitable."

 

With a casualty rate among the clergy of 19 to 1 it is obvious (to me anyway) that something is VERY, VERY wrong. What was the casualty rate among the original apostles? 1 to 11. And Jesus purposely and knowingly picked the one who fell, that the scripture might be fulfilled. If you do the research, you will find that the divorce rate, statistics on mental health problems, out of wedlock pregnancies, physical and sexual abuse rates within the institutionalized church - of any denomination - are the same as the culture at large.

What is wrong? I submit the structure of the church is completely wrong. The problem is systemic. The structure of the institutional church is 180 degrees out of phase with what Jesus and the apostles taught: To be the greatest you must become the servant of all. Power is perfected in weakness. Weakness is strength. When you are weak - then you are strong. You consider others as better than yourself. You give, give, give. You wash each other's feet - literally as well as metaphorically. Jesus' description of this upside-down Kingdom - the Kingdom of God - where everything is reversed from what we see in the world does not fit with what I generally see in the institutional church. The church shouldn't even BE an institution. It should be - and is - a body. A body is organic, changing, messy, and hard to define. The Church should be manifested in the world as an organism, not an Organization. One that's based on believers being placed by the Spirit into relationships. These relationships have to do with everything about life. Families, child raising, teaching, learning, accountability, progressive and continuing sanctification and purity, praying together, worshipping together, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice - everything.

The Church I am attempting to describe, since it is organic and is made up of interconnected relationships that are put into place by the Spirit of God, since it is defined by and controlled by God, is uncorrupted in its structure. I am NOT saying that the individuals are uncorrupted; it's the STRUCTURE of the thing that I'm talking about. And if those relationships that the Spirit of God has put into place happen to occur within an institutional church setting, then the TRUE Church and the institutional church overlap. There ARE institutional churches where the pastor has a servant's heart, and the relationships that occur within the church are ordained of God and exhibit the characteristics of the Church that is laid out in the New Testament. However, it has been my experience that THAT kind of institutional church is very rare. They're out there, but they are hard to find. They are usually very small, with a low profile, and not a lot of assets. The reason for that is because when you have a lot of assets, the seduction and corrupting influence of power comes into play. That's why the Church should not own assets. Assets attract the kind of person who is the exact antithesis of the Shepard who lays down his life for the sheep, the pastor who is the servant of all, no matter what it costs him. 

 

How many of those persons who get into the ministry for the wrong reasons, or get seduced by money, sex, &/or glory, would have the same trajectory if the office of head pastor, for instance, involved no salary, no home to live in, sometimes a crap job would have to be taken just to get by, in addition to teaching, preaching, and ministering, no cars, no earthly possessions, no denominational retirement plan, no control over money, people, or anything? Society at large would consider them stupid, insane, or at the very least look down on them as the dregs of society, and at the end of the road comes a painful death. Wait a minute, I just described the life of all the apostles, except for John, who was the ONLY one not murdered. You want to be an apostle? You want to be the head pastor? Are you willing to pay the price? "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach SHALL BE JUDGED WITH GREATER STRICTNESS" (Jas 3:1). Those who are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven must be the least, the servant, of all. I ask you, is the institutional church set up commensurate with these principles? I hold that it is not.

Now I'm not suggesting that you leave your church. That is between you and God. I believe God works for good in every situation with those who love Him. He is bigger than any situation, and I can accept that He might actually direct people to a certain institutional church for certain reasons. That has happened to me in the past and for all I know, may happen again. I hope that I've made clear in what I've said so far that I acknowledge that it's possible for the true church and the institutional church to overlap. All I'm doing here is telling you my reasons for not going to an institutional church and why I say that it's futile to try and "fix" it. Now it could be that God wants you to stay where you are in order to help deal with the fallout of this situation you've been through. People are hurting, discouraged, and needing a helping hand as a result of the crap this unscrupulous pastor has caused. People for who Christ died, who are believers, and who God loves. When you pray with PEOPLE, encourage them, minister to their needs - THAT is the true church! But the institution is unnecessary and counterproductive because it is structured in a manner that attracts those very people that would abuse power. The institutional structure is wrong! Because the TRUE church is defined by and controlled by God, made up of interconnected relationships that are put into place by the Spirit of God, it is IMPOSSIBLE for man to corrupt the structure of the thing. Yes, the TRUE church is made up of fallible, errant, sinful human beings, but the structure of the thing transcends that, and is designed "for the equipment of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

 

Me: It is not necessary to participate in an institutional church in order to fulfill these commands. An autonomous home meeting would do just as well and would be more commensurate with what we see in the New Testament. Once the "Church" owns assets - buildings, property, vehicles, etc - it becomes part of the world system. At the very least it is highly compromised.
 

My Friend: I still really struggle with such a blanket statement as this. Biblically speaking, where is there scripture that speaks to your position on the church owning assets?  Clearly there were buildings (temples and synagogues).  Are there corrupt churches that have lost their biblical focus and being run as a business today? Absolutely and that is flat wrong....and God will deal with the leadership of these churches.  But I also believe that your perspective of a small home-based church is not entirely scriptural.  While I will concede, the beginning of the church was meeting in homes, there is plenty of scripture that points us to the need for organizational protocols and hierarchies which are not needed in a small setting.  Secondly, the New Testament churches were experiencing tremendous numerical growth as evidenced in Acts.  As you can tell, I serve as a lay leader in our body that does own assets, but our assets do not own us.  Nothing is purchased without prayer and consideration as to how the kingdom is effected by purchasing or not...

 

Response: Again, I'm not attacking you, your church, or anything. You asked about my statement about believing in a Creator but not being a church-going man and so I'm responding to that. These things have a way escalating and going in directions that were not anticipated. That's not necessarily a bad thing; maybe God has something in mind.

 

The Church owning assets: the people sold houses and land and gave the money to the apostles who DISTRIBUTED IT TO THE POOR.  All throughout the Book of Acts the people get together, devote themselves to the apostle's teaching, break bread and fellowship together in private homes. It's all very spontaneous and organic. Nowhere is there any indication of a building that is owned by a group of men (a corporation) and administered by democratic ideals and exclusively set aside for any of this activity.

As far as the temples and the synagogues go, they were part of the Mosaic system and passed away with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD. Hebrews 6:13 says, "In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away." When the writer of Hebrews wrote this, the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. That's why he says, "is ready to vanish". It hadn't actually vanished yet. That temple was the supreme symbol of the Mosaic covenant. Even though it was still standing, the writer recognizes that it is "obsolete." Temples and synagogues were, and are not, relevant to the Church. The Church IS the temple of the new covenant. Today we can say of the temple in Jerusalem, "HAS vanished."

Organizational protocols and hierarchies: The apostles obviously thought they were needed in a small setting. The first "church" meeting is recorded in Acts 1:13, where the disciples of Jesus met together in the upper room of a house. For the first three centuries of the church, Christians commonly met in homes. Clement of Alexandria, an early church father (circa 200AD), wrote of worshipping in a house. A private house in Dura-Europos (near Baghdad) was excavated in the 1930's and was found to be used as a Christian meeting place in AD 232, with one small room serving as the baptistery. Throughout history, various Christian groups worshipped in homes, often due to persecution by the state church or the civil government. The Church building, as we know it today, did not become commonplace until after Constantine's acceptance and enforcement of state-backed protection of Christianity circa 313AD.

You said, "But I also believe that your perspective of a small home-based church is not entirely scriptural."

 

Sorry, but I believe your perspective is the one that's not scriptural. To be honest, I don't even attend a home church on a regular basis. But I do meet and function with others with whom I worship, pray, encourage, edify, learn from - usually in a private home - in short, all the things the New Testament describes as what being part of the Body of Christ is all about. Again, I don't have the time to lay this all out for you but the "church" as we know it, a building dedicated to the purpose where we meet, sing songs that one guy picks, sit for a considerable length of time and listen to one man speak, participate - or not - in following a carefully prepared liturgy or meeting structure - all this is based on the model of Greek philosophical academies and has nothing to do with the church - the real church - as described in the New Testament. The church as described in the New Testament did not own assets - the structure was relational and organic, not corporation-like. To move me from my position you are going to have to show me scriptures that explicitly speak of assets - land, buildings, and goods - in the context of the church structure. I don't think there are any. Whenever assets are mentioned it's usually in the context of selling them and giving the money away. And the assets that are sold and given away are individual assets. Nowhere that I know of are corporate assets mentioned.

 

My Friend: Debate on this point is clearly not going to get us anywhere as I simply do not concur with your characterization.  I'll say again, this rotten fruit is the Bride of Christ.  The church isn't the building or the pastor, it is the fellowship of believers.  Believers who will still "go astray" when left to their own will, but that is why corporate worship is so vital.  To hold each other accountable and to subordinate our collective selves under the Lordship of Christ. 
 

Response: Yes! That's what I've been saying! You are absolutely correct when you say,  "The church isn't the building or the pastor, it is the fellowship of believers"! We agree! So then why is the building necessary? Is the building necessary for corporate worship? No, it isn't! Is the building necessary for the fellowship of believers? No. Can we hold each other accountable and subordinate our collective selves under the Lordship of Christ without the building? Of course we can! Consider this: how much money does it cost to maintain your building? Would Jesus rather the "church" have the building or give that money to the poor? Study his sayings and consider well before answering.