1
Come Sunday
Sit in the back if you want to. Nothing is asked of visitors — no card, no standing up, no offering plate passed under your nose.
A cooperative church
The Lion of Judah has prevailed
One congregation that holds its work, its tools and its table in common. We gather Sunday to worship, and the rest of the week to carry each other's load.
Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book.Revelation 5:5 · KJV
The scroll opens because someone worthy took it, not because the church was strong. We hold things in common for the same reason we sing: it is the shape of a people who have already been rescued, not the price of being rescued.
How people join
Four steps, in order, and nobody is hurried through them. Most households take the better part of a year.
2
Sit and study
Bible study at 6:45, the second and fourth Thursday. Open to everyone. This is where you meet the church as it actually is, and where you find out whether you want in.
3
Take a share of work
Pick something real and carry it for a season — setting up, cleaning up, the sound desk, driving people to appointments. The hours are counted under your name.
4
Make covenant
Baptism if you haven't been baptized, then a public promise before the congregation. From that Sunday you have a voice and a vote.
How churches join
A congregation can hold things in common with us without becoming us. Four steps, the same as for people, and slower — most take two years.
1
Write to us
An elder writes on behalf of the congregation, not an individual on behalf of a hope. Two of ours come and sit through an ordinary Sunday.
2
Open the books both ways
You see ours, we see yours. Holdings, debts, salaries, whatever fund either of us keeps. A cooperative that cannot show its ledger is asking for trust it has not earned.
3
Share one thing first
One thing lent, one season of work carried together, one household helped between us. The agreement follows the practice; it does not lead it.
4
Covenant between congregations
Written, read aloud in both rooms, and voted on separately by each. Either congregation may end it by the same vote, without penalty.
You stay yourselves
No congregation is absorbed. You keep your name, your elders, your order of service and your discipline. There is no head office and no assessment to pay.
You keep your property
Your building, land and accounts stay yours. Nothing is transferred, mortgaged or pledged, and no shared holding may be borrowed against.
Doctrine
Agreement on the first-order articles, room to differ on the rest. The three tiers on the belief page are how we sort which is which.
Money
No dues. Gifts between congregations are gifts, recorded in both ledgers and audited in January. Nothing owed, nothing repayable.
Not an investment
Joining the cooperative confers no interest in the fund, no unit, no return and no claim on anything the fund owns. They are separate entities and stay that way.
Leaving
By vote, with a season's notice. Anything lent goes back where it came from and the hours are settled to zero. Nobody is held in by paperwork.
What we hold
Short enough to say from memory. The full statement runs to twelve articles.
First
Scripture
The whole of it, read out loud and preached straight through the books rather than picked over for topics.
- 2 Timothy 3:16
- Psalm 119
Center
Christ, risen
He is King now, not one day. That is why the work is joyful and why we are not frightened of what comes next.
- Revelation 5
- 1 Corinthians 15
Together
One purse
What the first church did in Jerusalem was not a rule, but it was not an accident either. We take it seriously and gladly.
- Acts 2:44–47
- 2 Corinthians 8
Inward
The household
Whatever this congregation comes to hold, it will hold for the people who have made covenant. Mercy beyond the household is owed by each of us personally, and is not administered from a clipboard.
- Acts 4:34–35
- Galatians 6:10
Membership
Open to any baptized believer who will make the covenant. No dues, no minimum income, no property handed over.
Money
Giving is free and unpublished. Books are audited yearly by two members who hold no office.
Government
Elders teach and shepherd; servants keep the holdings; the congregation votes on the budget and on every member.
The name
Revelation 5:5 and Romans 8:15 in the same breath — the Lion's roar, and the cry of a child who has just found out whose house this is.
Children
Children stay in the room for the whole service. There is no separate class to take them to, and nobody minds the noise.
The table
The first churches ate. Not a wafer and a sip appended to a service — supper, in a house, every week, with the bread and the cup inside the meal rather than lifted out of it. Five things the New Testament says about how that table was ordered, because we are trying to keep them.
1
It was a real meal
They broke bread house to house and ate together with gladness. The Supper was not a symbol beside the food; it was the food. Paul rebukes Corinth for eating in a way that was no longer the Lord’s Supper — not for eating.
2
Weekly, on the first day
The disciples came together on the first day of the week to break bread, and Paul preached until midnight because nobody was in a hurry to leave. The meal set the rhythm of the week, not the other way round.
3
Nobody eats first
At Corinth the ones who could arrive early ate before the ones who worked, and some went hungry at a table with food on it. Paul’s instruction is two words long: tarry one for another. A table that shames the poor is not this table.
4
Servants keep it fair
The first office the church invented after the apostles existed because of a complaint about food: widows were being passed over in the daily distribution. Seven men were appointed to wait on tables. The order of the meal is not housekeeping; it is why deacons exist.
5
One loaf, one body
The bread is broken from one loaf because the many are one body. That is also why Paul withstood Peter to his face for pulling back from a table — who you will eat with is not manners, it is the gospel made visible or denied.
What we keep
The cup inside the meal
The bread and the cup are taken within a supper, weekly, not lifted out of one and handed round a seated room. Bring something if you can and nothing if you cannot. Nobody is counting, and the two are indistinguishable by design — which is the whole of rule three above, kept rather than admired.
Who eats
Sit down
Visitors are welcome at the meal without being asked anything at all. Eat, and let somebody else answer the questions.
Who may take the bread and cup is a matter of belief rather than of hospitality, and it is answered in the statement of faith rather than restated here.
Sunday · 10:00am
Come and
sit with us
Email us and we will send directions and a parking note. Dress however you dress the rest of the week — half the room comes straight off a shift.
Sunday10:00am
Bible study6:45pm · 2nd & 4th Thursday
Men's round tableMondays, 7:00pm
Emailelders@roarcry.com