Private Worship

I've been mulling over your last post and what I think I see in it is that in my mind there is no separation between private worship and public worship, just as there is no separation in my mind in behaving like a Christian all of the time verus dividing one's beliefs into this-is-how-I-behave-as-a-citizen-of-the-world and this-is-how-I-behave-as-a-child-of-God.

I think that regardless of church membership, followers of Jesus should hold each other accountable - encouraging when needed and speaking the truth in love when needed. I don't mean that a person should go up to someone they don't know from Adam and start telling them what they are doing wrong - I mean that in the course of life, people know people and have relationships that don't necessarily include church or not the same church.

The RCC has always had this definition of the church, that outside of the RCC there is no salvation and that the community of the saints is about dead people who are probably in Heaven. The emphasis was so much on the corporate that the private form of worship (the spirit of the law) was completely overshadowed, almost obliterated by the letter of the law.

It seems to me that Jesus is really addressing the corporate aspect of religion when he says in Matthew 6: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

My understanding of the 'church' and how we are not to forsake assembling together is that 'church' means only a bunch of individuals who believe in Jesus, not a corporate structure at all.
I see the church as written about by the apostles and the community of saints as something that exists outside of society and society's institutions. Outside of time, even.

People do organize themselves automatically and I understand that. But I think that the Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner actually demonstrates the opposite of how you see it. It is the way we ought all to pray, all the time.

The tendency of people to turn to a corporate structure as a means of gaining respectability was rejected. Not only in this example but also in the example of when he drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

To me, it is the private prayer of individuals that sanctifies and defines the church and is the church.

I'm not sure this post makes any sense at all. I haven't been able to find quite the right words to explain what I mean.