Local Churches Need Other Local Churches

Having established that local churches share an inseparable connection to one another, we learn from the New Testament Scriptures how desperately we need one another. In the first century, local churches were accountable to one another to guard the purity of the gospel and the purity of their public worship. The same safeguards are needed by local churches today. But the only way that such accountability can practically exist is for local churches to be formally connected to one another on the basis of sharing the same basic understanding of doctrine and practice, all the while recognizing and respecting the autonomous authority of each local church. This sermon is a plea to give ourselves wholeheartedly to this pioneering work in the first part of the 21st century.