There are plenty of ways to destroy a church. Vandalism aside, you can put into practice any of the age-old heresies so that the church goes into the abyss at full stride. You can stop preaching the Gospel. You can even just all stop coming. Thing is, I don’t only want to talk about how to destroy a church but rather how to destroy a distinct type of gathering of God’s people—the Open Brethren assemblies.
Open Brethren have historically been committed the centrality of Christ, the weekly declaration of the Lord’s death and resurrection, a high commitment to Scripture, commitment to missionary work, and to pursing the simplicity of worship of Christ found in the principles afforded to us within the New Testament. This last bit dovetails back into the Lord’s Supper and (what other Christians might call peculiarities, but we call) brethren distinctives. It’s why Open Brethren for years gathered outside of other denominations to proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ in obedience to his command “This do in remembrance of me.” It’s why the Open Brethren don’t even like to use that term, but rather pin “so-called” in front of it. We’re largely committed to just calling ourselves “brethren” according to the principles we see laid down in Scripture.
There’s a way to kill all of that.
In a few easy and non-ordered steps (so far numbering six, the number man), I’ll show you how one can go about murdering a ministry and a movement of a local church. It should only take a little bit of time but, if you go about it the right way, you can deeply injure the believers who have been trying to faithfully gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.