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Somewhere in your congregation is a woman who has believed every word of the gospel for nineteen years and has never been in a room where bear ye one another's burdens was true. She is not a cynic. She is starving, and she has been told the food does not exist.

One can only be starved of a food that exists. That is the whole of this site in a sentence.

What intra-ecclesial apologetics is

Apologetics is usually a case made to the world for the faith. Intra-ecclesial apologetics is a case made to the church for the church God intended. It argues, from the text and from what is known about human beings, that the New Testament prescribes a form for the church; that the form fits the creature; that the modern arrangement departs from it at points that can be named; and that the right response is recovery, not abandonment.

It makes that argument to three audiences: the wounded, who ache and cannot say why; the loyal, who love their church and sense something missing; and leaders, who carry more than any one person was meant to carry and would like to know why.

The four moves

• There is a discernible design. Nearly sixty times the epistles say one another and attach a command to it. The assembly's stated purpose is edification, by every member. Elders are plural, working, and locally known. The room is a house and the centre is a table. How to sort what is mandated from what is free.
• The design fits the creature. Belonging is a fundamental need with two conditions; the household is where emotion is formed; the room predicts behaviour better than the person; honour rankings form automatically and must be actively inverted. What the creature requires.
• The modern system deviates at nameable points. Greece made the church a school, Rome a government, Europe a territory, America an enterprise. Each stage solved a real problem and each cost something the design depended on. How the church bends toward its host.
• The response is recovery, not abandonment. The prophet grieves; the cynic gloats. There is no instrument in the New Testament for compelling the will, so the design is taught, demonstrated in a circle of four, and waited for. Teach before touch.

What this is not

It is not an attack on pastors, buildings, or denominations. The people are sincere, the gospel is preached, and the Spirit is present. What has gone missing is a form, and forms go missing quietly over centuries for reasons that seemed good at every step. The rule of the whole discipline is that the diagnosis must explain the sincere. Systems before villains.

It is not a reason to leave. Nothing on this site tells anyone to leave their church.

Where to begin

1. Read You Are Not Aching Because the Design Failed.
2. Read The Reciprocal Verbs, then go through the epistles with a pen and mark every one another. Ask of each: where, in my actual week, could this be obeyed?
3. Find one other person who has done the same reading. Sit at a table. Obey one verb.
4. Then work through the three courses in order.

Go set the table.