Kay

There were no church buildings in Ephesus. Houses for Christian worship did not begin to be built until two hundred years after the days of Paul. No Christian church building was known until about 340 AD. Paul stayed with Lydia in her house. He and the rest of the new believers held ‘church’ in her home and possibly others, but no synogogue or church building is known to have existed there at that time. How can that not be ‘formal’ church? – they had no other choice. There was no St. Georges Presbyterian Church there, no First Baptist, no cathedral of any sort.

Do you think our fellow believers in the underground Church of China, and places like it, are never really having “formal church”?