A Church of a Different Kind

Ooh! Came across this on Christian News. Haha... just thought it's interesting, so posting it for your reading too.

A conversation on the Church with Wee Tiong Howe, Senior Elder and Pastor of City Missions Church, is likely to discomfit most traditional Christians.

According to him, the hierarchical system that defines many established churches today was not a thing of the loose fellowship Jesus formed with the disciples and the fellowship of the early believers after the original Day of Pentecost as described in the concluding passage of Acts 2.

In fact, he wonders if the Church of Acts even knew of anything remotely similar to a pastor. He set that to the acid test by asking this reporter if he could show where in the Book of Acts the word appeared.

There were apostles, elders and deacons, but not pastors, in the Church of Acts, Wee pointed out.

And City Missions Church or CMC is a bold attempt to emulate that model.

There is no ‘controlling’ and ‘single-leader’ structure in the congregation; only a ‘relational’ and ‘plural’ one, according to the middle-aged man. And instead of the usual cell-group system, which doesn’t ‘fit’ it, CMC divides its 400-odd members into house churches each led by a pastoral team.

Furthermore, every member is a candidate for world mission; the church has the vision of bringing the message of Jesus Christ to the world and dispatching marketplace people as its ‘missionaries’.

After all, the New Testament Church comprised marketplace believers, says Wee, who describes his congregation as a ‘uniquely’ marketplace church different from hierarchical churches – and proud of it.

Brother Wee should know. Prior to an adventurous journey of faith that saw him starting a church, company, Bible school and world mission agency, he was just another ‘successful’ business professional. Though he took ten weeks every year to go on mission trips around the world, he recalled being a ‘powerless’ Christian, reaching none of the nearly 1,000 people in his workplace.

And then, one day, he had a vision of the marketplace as a harvest field. He saw a company of employees changing into hands reaching out to God... [read more]