Any treatment of this issue must address such plaguing issues as, "What is the biblically historical basis for doing city-wide church ministry?" "What implications does city-church ministry have for theological diversity and orthodoxy?" Furthermore, "What must change and what must not change in local congregations if we are to begin to approach a biblically-driven city-church ministry?"

The New Testament data in regard to the city-church:

A. Jesus dealt extensively with people in their city context.
Unlike John the Baptist, much of Jesus' ministry and miracles take place within cities and towns of Israel. A simple list of the places where Jesus is recorded to have exercised his ministry indicates that cities held an important place in Jesus' strategy of ministry (i.e. Nain, Nazareth, Cana, Korazin, Tyre, Sidon, Zarephath, Caesarea Philippi, Capernaum, Sychar, Bethany, Jericho, Jerusalem, etc.). The passion of the Lord for the city of Jerusalem is undeniable in his words of Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"

B. The Early Church understood "the church" in three distinct capacities.

1. The Church Universal: the entire community of believers in Christ through all ages, in diverse cultures and nations of whom each believer is a part but which does not have opportunity to gather together at one time (see Mt. 16:18; Ac. 9:31; I Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13; Eph. 1:22; 3:10,21; 5:23-25, 27, 29, 32; Phil. 3:6; Col. 1:18, 24).

2. The City-Church: the visible, interrelating, localized (within the same geographical city) community of persons who believed in Christ and periodically gathered together to fulfill mutual functions as believers. See for example, the church in Jerusalem (Acts 5:11; 8:1, 3; 11:22; 14:27; 15:4, 22), the church at Antioch (Acts 11:26; 13:1; 15:3, 30) the churches in Iconium, Lystra, and Pisidian Antioch (Acts 14:21-23), the church at Caessaria (Acts 18:22), the church at Ephesus (Acts 20:17; I Tim. 3:5, 15; 5:16, 17), the church in Cenchrea (Rm. 16:1), the church in Corinth (I Cor. 1:2; 11:18; 14:23; 2 Cor. 1:1), the church at Philippi (Phil. 1:1; 4:15), the church at Laodicea (Col. 4:16; Rev. 3:14), the church at Thessalonica (I & 2 Thess. 1:1) the other churches of Revelation (Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7) and other churches (Gal. 1:2; 3 Jn. 1:9, 10).

3. The House Church: believers of a particular geographic area/city who frequently gathered together in homes of other believers (Acts 12:5; Rm. 16:5; I Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Philemon 1:2).

Twentieth-century western Christianity has been quick to acknowledge both the church universal and the modern house/local church in Scripture but has given little or no attention to the city-church in the New Testament - that church which is referred to more often than either of the other two distinct church entities.

C. The Apostles viewed the city-church as the central representation of the Body of Christ in an area and division of that city-church as a sign of immaturity and defeat. 

By far the largest body of references to "church" in the New Testament refer to the local city church (see 2.B. above). Most of the epistles were written either to all the saints of a city (Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2) or to the city-church there (I & 2 Cor.., 1 & 2 Thess. and the churches of Revelation 2 & 3). When unity upon that city-wide basis was threatened by factions who followed various spiritual leaders, Paul is forced to speak to them as "worldly, mere infants in Christ" (I Cor. 3:1).

Jesus himself prayed specifically for the unity of all those who would believe on Him through the testimony of his disciples and indicated that such unity would be a powerful apologetic to a watching world (Jn. 17:20-23).

Despite that, the twentieth-century western church has largely dismissed the call to any form of unity of local house churches into a larger city-church model based upon some of the following practical and theological objections.

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