Every argument about what the church should look like runs into the same objection: "That was just their culture." Meeting in homes was their culture. Sharing meals was their culture. Plural elders were their culture. So, the objection goes, nothing about the form of the early church binds us; only the gospel does.
The objection has a real point, and a real limit. Some things the early church did were circumstantial. They met in homes partly because they had no buildings. They greeted with a kiss because that was how Mediterranean people greeted. Nobody thinks the holy kiss is binding on Norwegians.
But the objection proves too much if it's allowed to dissolve everything. The same New Testament that describes house meetings also commands things about the assembly, in the imperative mood, with reasons attached. A reader needs criteria to sort what's mandated from what's modelled from what's free. Here are six.
Six sorting criteria
First: is it commanded, or merely described? Acts describes the believers selling possessions and holding all things common (Acts 2:45; 4:32). Nowhere is that commanded; Peter tells Ananias his property was his own to keep (Acts 5:4). It's modelled, not mandated. By contrast, bear ye one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2) is an imperative. So is confess your faults one to another (James 5:16). The mood of the verb is the first test.
Second: is a reason given that transcends the circumstance? When Paul commands that the assembly's contributions be done unto edifying (1 Corinthians 14:26), the reason — edification — isn't cultural. It's the purpose of the meeting. When he explains why an elder must not be a novice — lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil (1 Timothy 3:6) — the reason is about human nature, not Ephesian custom. A command with a trans-cultural reason is mandated.
Third: is it repeated across authors and churches? Plural eldership appears in Jerusalem (Acts 15:2), Ephesus (Acts 20:17), Philippi (Philippians 1:1), Crete (Titus 1:5), the dispersion (James 5:14), and Peter's churches (1 Peter 5:1). One author might reflect a local practice; six witnesses across the Mediterranean indicate a pattern that was taught.
Fourth: is it called a tradition handed down? Paul distinguishes his own judgment from what he received. I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you (1 Corinthians 11:23). Hold the traditions which ye have been taught (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you (1 Corinthians 11:2). When the apostles say "this is what we received and passed on," they're marking something as more than local.
Fifth: does it flow from the nature of the church itself? The church is described as a body (1 Corinthians 12), a household (1 Timothy 3:15), a building of living stones (1 Peter 2:5), a flock (1 Peter 5:2). Practices that follow from those natures — mutual care, family relationships, shared construction, plural shepherding — aren't incidental. Practices that contradict them are deviations, however ancient.
Sixth: what happens when it's removed? Some things can be dropped without consequence. Others, when dropped, disable a command. Remove the shared meal and tarry one for another (1 Corinthians 11:33) becomes meaningless. Remove the small assembly and every one of you hath a psalm becomes impossible. If removing a form makes a command unobeyable, the form was load-bearing.
Three columns
Run the New Testament through those six tests and the material sorts into three columns.
Mandated. The reciprocal commands — the one anothers, nearly sixty of them. The purpose of the assembly as edification with participation by all. Plural, non-novice, locally-known eldership with stated character qualifications. The Lord's Supper as a shared meal. Baptism. Mutual correction with a stated procedure (Matthew 18:15-17). Care for widows and the poor as an obligation of the body (Acts 6:1; 1 Timothy 5:3-16; James 1:27). Hospitality (Romans 12:13; Hebrews 13:2). The teaching of Scripture. The honour inversion — upon these we bestow more abundant honour (1 Corinthians 12:23). These are commanded, reasoned, repeated, and load-bearing.
Modelled. Meeting in homes. Daily gatherings (Acts 2:46). Sharing of goods. The kiss. Evening meetings after work. Itinerant workers supported by churches. These are described as the apostolic pattern, commended, and often wiser than the alternatives — but not commanded as such. A church may depart from them, and should have a reason.
Free. Language, music, dress, times, the specific order of a gathering, the use or non-use of a building, the method of teaching. Paul's principle governs here: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some (1 Corinthians 9:22). Cultural forms are adaptable in service of the mandated ones.
Why the sorting is hard
If the sorting were easy, everyone would have done it. It's hard for a specific reason: the mandated things are reciprocal and the modelled things are the forms that make reciprocity possible.
You can't obey confess your faults one to another in a room of four hundred facing forward. You can't obey every one of you hath a psalm in a service with a fixed program. You can't obey tarry one for another without a meal. The mandated commands presuppose a form small enough, mutual enough, and unhurried enough to obey them in.
So the modelled forms aren't binding in themselves — but some form that does what they did is required, because without one the mandated commands become dead letters. A church is free to meet in a warehouse instead of a house. It isn't free to meet in a way that makes sixty imperatives impossible to obey.
The development objection
One more objection deserves an answer: the church develops. The Spirit leads it into new forms. The first century is a seed, not a template.
Yes. The church develops, and much of what developed is good: rigorous theology, ordered governance, geographic parishes, voluntary conversion. Development is real and not the enemy.
But development isn't substitution. An acorn develops into an oak; everything the oak is was implicit in the acorn. An acorn doesn't develop into a bicycle. If you find a bicycle where you planted an acorn, something other than development has occurred.
The test is whether the mandated functions are preserved and elaborated, or replaced by something that serves a different end. A church that has developed its teaching into a rigorous tradition while its members still teach and weigh one another has developed. A church in which the teaching function has been relocated entirely to a professional class and the members have become an audience hasn't developed the function. It has substituted for it.
How to use this
Take one practice in your congregation — any one. The Sunday format, the eldership, the children's program, the budget, the building. Ask the six questions. Which column does it fall in?
Then ask the harder question: does this practice make a mandated command easier or harder to obey? A modelled or free practice that helps people bear one another's burdens is serving the design. A free practice that has quietly made the mandated commands impossible isn't free anymore. It has become a substitution.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Sort honestly, keep what's commanded, honour what's modelled, and hold the free things loosely — and always in service of the sixty verbs that can't be done alone.