form and freedom in church

Some dear friends of mine have prompted thinking regarding what church looks like. The Emergent Conversation has certainly challenged me with this but while I like some of the principles, I sense some abandonment of some truths that are not open for negotiation. So I eagerly await for my friends to share more to stir my thinking. In the meantime, I recall Francis Schaeffer's, Death In The City in which he outlines four key considerations needed if the Church is going to be what it should be.

1. the difference between being a cobelligerent and an ally
2. the preaching and practice of truth, even if at great cost
3. the practice of the orthodoxy of community within true Christian groups and between true Christian groups
4. the form and what freedom the Bible gives in regard to the church as the church — or we could speak of it as the boundary conditions set forth in the New Testament on the polity of the church

In Chapter 4, Form and Freedom in the Church ...

The church of Jesus Christ is, of course, first of all the church invisible. It is the body of believers united by faith in Christ in the full biblical sense, whether or not they are members of an external organization. It includes the church today at war in the present world and the church of the past whose members are already at peace. It is the church universal.

But we also learn through Scripture that the Church is to be visible - a paradox - both visible and invisible. On being visible ...

There is no biblical norm as to where, and where not, the church should meet. The central fact is that the early concept of the church had no connection with a church building. The church was something else: a group of Christians drawn together by the Holy Spirit in a place where they worked together in a certain form ... Individual churches were formed as people became Christians, and these were definite, specific entities.

This makes it hard for us to think about the practical outworking of what it is to be Church. Our building structure, or more precisely our love for certain structural types very often drive how we do Church. To help us, Schaeffer provides seven norms.

1. there should be churches made up of Christians - I think this speaks for itself
2. these congregations met together in a special way on the first day of the week. Though there are not many references, they do seem definite. Consider 1 Co 16:2 and Acts 20:7. Each first day of the week they met as a statement that “He is risen, He is risen indeed!” But let us notice that no specific time of the day is given as a norm. The day is set; the time of the day is left totally open.
3. there are to be church officers (elders) who have responsibility for the local churches. Missionaries on missionary journeys produced not only individual Christians, but also churches with officers (Acts 14.23). There may be some "hierarchal" structure within that but there is clearly a norm of leadership by a plurality of elders (1 Tim 5.17). The best treatment I've read on this is Biblical Eldership by Alexander Strauch.
4. there should be deacons responsible for the community of the church in the area of material things (Acts 6.1-6).
5. the church is to take discipline seriously (1 Cor 5.1-5)
6. there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons (1 Tim 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9)
7. there is a place for form on a wider basis than the local church (Acts 15)

Aside from this, I see a lot of freedom regarding the details, e.g., how to work out the administration of the Lord's Supper, how collecting of money occurred, how they managed to have each person participate, etc.. There are important activities that should happen individually and corporately but I don't find Scripture prescriptive regarding the "how to".

With each abuse or abandonment of some principle, I find someone proposing great solutions but then I find that leading to abuse or abandonment of another principle to which someone proposes another solution and so on it goes. I believe searching for the right balance will continue until He returns. Until then, my aim is to not get angry at those that are missing the points I find important but rather to look at them and learn what I might be missing in my journey.

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