So Great Salvation S11E5 Church Pt 5: Government / Ecclesiastical Polity

In this episode, we continue our examination of the departure from early church polity and the heretical separation of clergy and laity by focusing on one of the most assumed—and least questioned—institutions of modern Christianity: the weekly sermon. What today is often regarded as the central act of Christian worship is, according to Scripture and early church practice, a late development rather than an apostolic mandate.

Drawing from the continued arguments laid out in Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, we explore the claim that the sermon, as a one-way, monological address delivered weekly by a single religious professional, is neither prescribed nor exemplified in the New Testament. Viola argues that early Christian gatherings were participatory, dialogical, and body-centered. Teaching occurred, but it was shared, situational, and relational—not institutionalized into a weekly performance by a clerical elite.

According to Viola, the sermon fundamentally reshaped church life by recasting the gathered body from a functioning organism into a listening audience. This shift reinforced the clergy–laity divide by centralizing spiritual authority in one voice and marginalizing the gifts of the many. Over time, preaching became synonymous with church itself, despite the absence of any command, example, or theological necessity for such a structure in apostolic Christianity.

This critique is powerfully echoed in the testimony of Watchman Nee, whose reflections emerge not from theory but from lived ecclesial experience. Nee observed that while there is no biblical requirement to maintain a Lord’s Day preaching meeting, many churches found themselves unable to relinquish it—not because Scripture demanded it, but because tradition and surrounding Christian culture exerted pressure. Reflecting on a decade of church life in Hankow, Nee concluded that the weekly sermon was not a true meeting of the local church at all, but a borrowed practice sustained largely by imitation rather than conviction.

Nee’s insight is especially striking: even when believers recognized that preaching was unnecessary for the church’s spiritual health, they continued it because “the nations around us have preaching on the Lord’s Day.” In other words, the sermon endured not by divine command, but by cultural inertia.

This episode is not a rejection of teaching, nor a dismissal of gifted communicators. Rather, it is a call to distinguish between biblical function and historical form. If the church is meant to be a body where “every one” contributes unto edifying, then practices that silence the many for the sake of the few deserve careful re-examination.

Join us as we ask whether the weekly sermon is a faithful inheritance from the apostles—or a tradition that unintentionally displaced the very life it sought to nourish.

https://linktr.ee/Sogreatsalvation