As an infant movement re-birthed in the late 1960’s, the modern Messianic Jewish synagogue movement, truly had little choice regarding their meeting venues. Truly almost all the Messianic synagogues had to nurse and nest under church roofs, since as a new born infant, she had no ability to spread her wings and fend for herself. We in the movement ought to be grateful for this shelter that these sponsoring churches provided for us in order to allow the infant movement to be sheltered and encapsulated from much of the pitfalls that any newborn movement would have encountered. No doubt that had we not been under the church’s wings in those early days (late 60’s, early 70’s) ,the King Herod Antipas’s of this present wicked age, led by zealous but blinded traditional Judaism and other loveless branches of Christendom, would have tried to murder the movement, even as all of Bethlehem’s babies under two were murdered. We must be grateful to those Christian Pastors and to Hebrew Christian pioneers, who created a womb that was nice, cozy and warm, wherein the infant movement could flourish. We must not forget our modern day roots.
By Rabbi/Brother Moshe Yoseph Koniuchowsky
Just recently as I surfed the Messianic synagogue congregational directory in the Messianic Times, I was struck by the frequency of listings in which modern day synagogues still meet in churches, mostly Baptist churches. My initial thought was that our growth and maturity as a united movement, may not be as advanced as we’d like to think it is. A maturing movement that has passed infancy needs to be crawling, walking and standing on it own two feet.
Should Messianic assemblies continue this disturbing trend of meeting in church buildings then there are several repercussions that we must be prepared for, for surely they will take place. Attacks will come from those outside the movement both by well meaning and by some not so well meaning people. Our movement certainly does not need more excess baggage, attached to its currently misunderstood theologies. Some of the numerous wrong perceptions that are sure to come our way should this current trend continue are:
There are many other strong and yet false accusations that satan will prepare to throw at us, if we erroneously continue to believe that Yahuwah will not or cannot supply funding for us to be totally autonomous, financially, governmentally and building wise. Of course Ha Satan being the father of lies, continues to deceive many Messianic leaders into staying in their safe womb like (rent free) church buildings. What happened to true leadership and vision? What happened to faith, trust and dependence on Yahuwah? Don’t you think that the same Yahshua that was Yahuwah-Yireh to Abraham in Bereshit ( Genesis 22) will also be Yahuwah-Yireh to you and your synagogue, if you would only let Him? The same Elohim that birthed Messianic Judaism as a prerequisite to Messianic Nazarene Yisrael, out of a sea of 2000 years of church sponsored religious apostasy and anti-Semitism, is ready to provide for you if you are willing to realize that the very essence of the Messianic Nazarene Yisrael movement is to allow Jews and Ephraimites the incentive and freedom to remain children of Israel, both during and after salvation, apart from churchianity and "church settings". While we have removed offensive symbols generally associated with Jewish sufferings from our meetings, we still meet in rooms that will advertise these same symbols just a mere ten minutes after our "Shabbat service" is over! Jewish people (saved and unsaved) sometimes stand around after the meetings and carefully watch us put the cross back up on the wall as we restore the room to its original setup. Jewish people are not stupid or fooled easily. Either you and your people are functioning children of Israel or you are church religionists in costumes, masquerading Hebraic practices. Do traditional Jewish synagogues allow so called "Christian" tenants to put up their cross ten minutes after the Jewish service? Of course not! They are culturally sensitive to their Jewish people! We must be no less sensitive to our brethren!
Obviously there may be some small under-financed groups who must meet in a church facility. We do not in any way condemn these groups. However we strongly believe that the presiding rabbi or leadership of such groups, must have a large enough Messianic vision, to see the church facility as the temporary and acceptable will of Yahshua and not His perfect will. We would encourage these groups who are stuck "meeting in a church" to strongly begin planning to move out and into a more proper setting for a true synagogue, such as a storefront or plan on embarking on a building construction project.
The real underlying question here is
not how big or small your congregation's budget is, rather how big your Yahuwah
is! He birthed these two great movements, now let Him nurture it through its
growing years, by your obedience to oversee a Messianic Nazarene Yisraelite synagogue. Not
a church-agogue!