From the time of Emperor Constantine onward, church buildings have been designed to separate clergy from laity. Clergy have been elevated higher than laity, as if they are somehow more special or more important. Church buildings have been designed to make the pew-sitters passive listeners and spectators rather than active participants, as the early Christians functioned. Their design has done away with face-to-face fellowship and interaction.
Look at your own sacred building and exegete it. After all, "form follows function." What is the function of your building? What is it conveying? What objects are higher, and what objects are lower in your building? What objects are at the front, and what objects are at the back in your building? Your sacred building follows the design of the Roman basilicas. Your building layout and the elements of your worship are patterned after pagan temples and rituals.
Why is the pastor positioned at the front? Why is he elevated above the rest of the congregants? (Do not buy the modern explanation, "So we can see him better.") Why is his chair usually larger than any other chairs that may be present? Why is there a rail that separates him from the rest of the congregation? Do your homework, Christians! This all stems from pagan rituals and practices, as well as from the Catholic Church.
None of it is Christian in the least. None of it can be found, substantiated, or defended from the New Testament. And do not even attempt to try and do so from the Old Testament because you would be dead wrong! Ever bothered reading or paying attention to what the book of Hebrews has to say? The sacred temple, sacred objects, and sacred priestly caste of the Old Testament was fulfilled and abrogated in and by Christ Jesus.
Institutional churches are not biblical. Period. You can argue until you are blue in the face all you want. You know it, and I know it. Your arrogant, stubborn pride just wants to argue in attempt to defend what you have known and been taught your entire life, rather than open your eyes, exercise that brain, and see the problem.
Up until Emperor Constantine, no such "church" buildings ever existed. With every "church" building he erected, he named them after saints the way pagans named their temples after gods. He also built them over burial sites of martyrs, as if it was some sort of "holy" ground, and that in death they possessed some kind of power. The tall spires or steeples that came later imitated the Egyptians and Babylonians, such as the tower of Babel, man aspiring to reach heaven. Even stained-glass windows draw from paganism. Every single element pertaining to your "church" building and the way your sacred building conducts "worship" is built upon pagan rituals and practices. Most of it stemming from the Greco-Roman culture.
Your sacred building also informs people that the holy and the everyday are separate and unconnected. And yet you wonder why in every denomination most their members live differently from the day after service to the day before service than they do the day of service. They have two lives, essentially. They are somber on worship day, but casual, relaxed, and free the other six days of the week. Unless of course they are legalistic, and then they are wound tighter than a coiled spring every day of the week.
Christianity is not Christianity to most adherents. They have no idea what Christianity is because they have been told what to do and what to believe their entire life that they have never bothered to remove the lens that was given to them by their leaders and their denomination and pay attention to what Jesus and the Scriptures have to say. Many Christians are nothing more than mindless parrots, and if you ever talk to them you can see how true that statement is. Whatever the pastor has to say, they are content in believing whether there is an ounce of truth to it or not. They never question him. In their eyes, he can do no wrong. This mentality is dangerous!
The pastor is not above the rest of the congregation. It does not matter what kind of education he has had or the number of degrees he might possess, he is not wiser or more intelligent than any other member of the congregation, nor are his opinions more valued. If he is wrong about something, it needs to be brought to his attention. A degree does not a holy man make you! Unfortunately, the ignorant have bought into this societal lie for hundreds of years. "He's a doctor, so he ought to know what he is talking about." Oh, really? And doctors have never been wrong in the past? Or even presently?
Education serves to teach you how to think and believe the way your professors think and believe. As long as you can retain whatever they have to tell you, whether it is true or not, and be able to repeat it back on a test or exam, you get the marks. Having the marks does not mean you actually know anything, or that you remotely have a clue what you are talking about. But many ignorant individuals today think that education and degrees somehow "make the man." Sorry, but you are WRONG! I have known kids who grew up with computers who could program and hack circles around adults who went to university for the same. Education and experience can be good in their own right, but neither is the be-all and end-all of professionalism. It is sheer prideful arrogance that thinks that someone without degrees and titles could not possibly be wiser and more intelligent than someone with several.
If you are brave enough to allow your Christianity to be examined in light of Scripture and history, and if you are willing to admit that most of what you know to be "church" is built upon paganism, the real question becomes, What next? Without taking that knowledge and becoming proud and arrogant, what do we do next? It is clear that the institutional church is failing (in fact, it never succeeded). Millions of people are leaving the institutional church and returning to the roots of biblical Christianity, seeking to become the church as they were meant to be. The answer is not necessarily returning to house "church" models, but it does demand an overhaul of what we presently practice and call "church."
Emperor Constantine modeled his "church" buildings after the pagan temples and Roman state buildings. Christianity was effectively married to the Roman culture under Constantine, and it has stuck ever since. More and more people are realizing that the current way they do "church" is empty; that there is something more they have been missing. The way your sacred building is laid out, the way your service is conducted, the use and placement of objects in your building and service, are all derived from the Catholic Church, which in turn are derived from the pagan religions and their rituals and practices. You sit in the pew calling yourself a Christian, but you have more in common with the Greco-Roman pagans than you ever have with the early Christians or Christ!
I do not know what this means for me and my family, but as I discover the truth of history and how much our modern "churches" have strayed from that truth, I know that I want nothing to do with it. I want the face-to-face communal fellowship that the Apostles and early Christians enjoyed. I do not want to emulate and mimic the religious worship of the pagans. As I pray that God would remove the scales from your eyes and lead you into the truth by searching the Scriptures (like a good Berean), pray that God would help me to know what I should do and how I should lead my family in the light of this knowledge.
Remember, those who came out of the Catholic Church had been heavily influenced by it. It is only natural that in trying to reform it that they would retain some of that influence. You can see it in every denomination: Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, etc. None is without taint. None is without the elements of paganism in the way they practice "church." Yet all will try to defend their concept and idea of "church," even imitating the Pharisees and Sadducees by attacking those God has opened the eyes of for even questioning their sacred cow. Protestant "churches" have placed the pastor between God and the congregation, as if the only way to Him is through the pastor.
It is time for God's children to wake from their slumber and become the church. The church is not some place you go, but something you are. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is speaking on behalf of their father, the Devil. Do not listen to them. Search the Scriptures. Learn your history. Stay the straight and narrow path. God wants to free you even from this enslavement. Do not quench the Spirit because of your pride and arrogance. Remember, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The reason God resists everything your hand attempts to do is because of your pride. Pray for humility. May God bless you as you truly seek after Him.