Rules for Walking in Fellowship- John Owen

John Owen's little book Rules for Walking in Fellowship is excellent. I encourage all of you to read and apply it.

We are doing the book for our Mens Forum group but are encouraging all of our folks age 15 and over to read it.

I will be posting some quotes and thoughts from the book as we make our way through it.

First, Owen sets out four presuppositions to his rules. He says these are obvious to every Christian Church or denomination and therefore do not even need  a serious defense. Some might debate his very presuppositions today.

I have paraphrased them here from Owen's language.

1.     Local Church bodies are divinely instituted

2.     Every believer must be bound to a local Christian Church.

3.     Submission to a local church is through voluntary consent.

4.     Collected believers should remain together in one congregation unless the congregation is too numerous and requires a second congregation.