Being a New Testament Church: Uniformity

In my previous post on the New Testament Church, I used the word “uniformity.” On MySpace, the use of this term was controversial to one responder and he thought that a better word would have been “unity” rather than “uniformity.” I want to focus on that one word today, though. Uniformity. I believe that one of the marks of the New Testament Church, the church that Jesus built, is uniformity. I want to try to build a case for this today.

Further Thoughts on Being a New Testament Church

At another place where I posted my original question on being a New testament church, I had a responder ask the following:

is a New Testament Church what we’re called or commanded to be?

I will state up front that this was never a thought in my mind. I was not worried with the whether-or-nots, but merely the can-we’s. My question was, in essence, can a church call itself a NT church if it is not diverse or striving to that ends? But I will answer the question posed to me anyway.

A question about being a New Testament Church

In Church this morning, Pastor Edgar talked about the origins of the early church. What he focused on was the fact that the early church was made up of Jews from many nations. To quote:

The church began as a multi-ethnic, multi-language fellowship.

He further went on to say that he believed that a multi-cultural church is an outworking of what the Spirit started in the book of Acts; it is a Biblical idea.

As I further reflected on this idea, I had a very pertinent question come to my mind.

A racially mixed church is one where no one people group makes up 80% or more of the congregation. And the early church was obviously made up of multiple cultures and languages. This being the case, here is my question:

Can a church call itself a New Testament church if it is not racially mixed or striving to that end? Defend your answer.

I am going somewhere with this, so I would love as many responses as possible.