5
" Let’s be even more honest. While we might like to think we have smothered everyone with one tasty culture, what we have actually accomplished is closer to the Weird Way of making and eating a salad. We like ourselves, our way of thinking, our music, and our . . . our everything. So we separate all the difference and differents and scatter them across the towns and cities so that each group worships on its own. Churches for men and not really for women, churches for the wealthy and churches for the middle class and churches for the poor, churches for whites and Mexican Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans and Indian Americans. Churches for liberals and churches for fundamentalists, churches for those who follow Calvin, Wesley, Luther, Aquinas, Menno — or for those who follow Hybels, Warren, Stanley, Hamilton, Chandler, or Driscoll. Sunday morning then becomes an exercise in cultural and spiritual segregation, and this has a colossally important impact on the Christian life itself! "
― Scot McKnight , A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together
13
" Understand that these early Christians did not meet in churches and sit apart from one another in pews, and then when the music ended get in their chariots and go home. No, their churches were small, and they met in homes or house churches. A recent study by a British scholar has concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about thirty people, this would have been their approximate make-up:1
• a craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and a dependent relative "
― Scot McKnight , A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together
14
" Understand that these early Christians did not meet in churches and sit apart from one another in pews, and then when the music ended get in their chariots and go home. No, their churches were small, and they met in homes or house churches. A recent study by a British scholar has concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about thirty people, this would have been their approximate make-up:1
• a craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and a dependent relative • some tenants, with families and slaves and dependents, also living in the same home in rented rooms • some family members of a householder who himself does not participate in the house church • a couple of slaves whose owners do not attend • some freed slaves who do not participate in the church • a couple homeless people • a few migrant workers renting small rooms in the home
Add to this mix some Jewish folks and a perhaps an enslaved prostitute and we see how many “different tastes” were in a typical house church in Rome: men and women, citizens and freed slaves and slaves (who had no legal rights), Jews and Gentiles, people from all moral walks of life, and perhaps, most notably, people from elite classes all the way down the social scale to homeless people. "
― Scot McKnight , A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together
15
" My neighbor is someone hurting, who needs help, who cannot help themselves, who appears on my path, who has been robbed, who is half dead, who is naked, who is unable to ask for help, of a different race, who is a stranger, who has been stripped, who is a foreign traveler, who has been beaten up, who might require me to take a risk, who can’t walk, who looks horrible, who is of a different religion, who is destitute, who is a victim of injustice, who has been passed by, who can’t say Thank You, who has been wounded, whom nobody wants to help, who is lonely, who will cost me some time, who is visible, who is a victim, who has been violated, who is vulnerable, who is a human being, who feels humiliated, who feels helpless, who is poor, who is someone I’m afraid to help, who is dangerous to help, who is discouraged, who might cost me money, who needs tender loving care, who feels defeated, and who is someone I am able to help.2 "
― Scot McKnight , A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God's Design for Life Together
