What is heresy? Are House Churches more liable to heresy than traditional churches? How will you be able to recognize it? How will you handle it? What provisions has Jesus made to help keep His church safe? What is the difference between just being wrong and heresy? What is sola scriptura all about? Are creeds good or bad?
Heresy is a scary word. It conjures up images of the torture rack, the Spanish inquisition, and burning at the stake. The title of this lesson is really more cute than helpful. What we are really going to focus on is how to spot really serious error and the provisions God has made for the church to deal with it. False teaching is an active problem of which every church needs to be wary.
The simple fact that we practice house church (alternative church) attracts a higher percentage of heretics (those with alternative theology). The last thing we need in theology is creativity!
Western Christianity is so associated with church buildings that the normal Christian, when he hears about house church, will give it about as much attention as he might a piece of junk mail he gets in the mail box. Thus, when you begin house churching, you are already fishing from a pool of people who think outside the box. This can be both good and bad. On the bad side, sometimes those people who are willing to take a second look at house church are already outside the traditional church for all the wrong reasons: they have poor social skills and can't get along with anybody, or they are disgruntled, or they are rebels against authority, or they have bad theology (their beliefs are eccentric or aberrant) and so they've been squeezed out of the traditional church.
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Stephen Atkerson helps church leaders discover simple growth strategies that Jesus gave the early church. For over 30 years, he has worked with evangelists, missionaries, church planters, and pastors in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. He is one of the pastors of a Baptist...
