Open Brethren, sometimes called Christian Brethren, are a group of Evangelical Christian churches that arose in the late 1820s as part of the Assembly Movement within the Plymouth Brethren tradition.
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29 Facts About Open Brethren
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Open Brethren are commonly known as "Plymouth Brethren", especially in North America.
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Separation of the independent or open brethren from the Exclusive Brethren occurred when John Nelson Darby denounced Benjamin Wills Newton, an elder of the Plymouth assembly, at that time the largest of the Brethren assemblies, over disagreements concerning prophecy and church organisation.
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In Germany, many Open Brethren assemblies have joined Wiedenest, a joint Open Brethren–Baptist venture which operates a seminary, conference centre, youth movement, and missionary organisation.
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Open Brethren are generally dispensational, pre-tribulational, and premillennial in their theology and they have much in common with other conservative evangelical Christian groups.
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Open Brethren have a strong emphasis on the concept of salvation.
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Open Brethren teach that baptism plays no role in salvation, and is properly performed only after a person professes Jesus Christ as Saviour.
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Essentially, Dispensationalism as taught by the Open Brethren sees a clear distinction between "law" and "grace", Israel and the Church, and holds that the Church, consisting of all true Christians, will be raptured when Jesus returns.
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10.
Open Brethren churches have traditionally avoided crosses displayed inside or outside their place of worship.
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12.
Until recently, Open Brethren churches have rarely used the word "Church" as part of their name.
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Some assemblies at the progressive end of the Open Brethren spectrum have names like "Life Church, Manurewa", or "Street City Church, Wellington".
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In most parts of the world, the "Open Brethren" label is rarely used as part of the name of a local congregation.
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Open Brethren assemblies have traditionally rejected the concept of anyone "joining" as a member of a particular local gathering of believers and the maintenance of any list of such members.
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Open Brethren assemblies are led by the local church elders within any fellowship and historically there is no office of "senior pastor" in most Open Brethren churches, because they believe such an office does not exist in the New Testament.
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Distinctive practice of the Open Brethren is a separate weekly Communion meeting, referred to as the "Breaking of Bread" or "The Lord's Supper".
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From this, Open Brethren teaching traditionally outlines a system in which the men take the "vocal" and leadership roles and the women take supportive and "silent" roles.
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The Open Brethren have generally taken this even further requiring the wearing of head coverings even though they have not generally permitted women to speak during services.
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The largest numbers of Open Brethren are to be found in India ; there are over 1,000 assemblies each in Angola, Zambia and Chad as well as the United Kingdom and the United States, 800 in Brazil and over 600 in Germany.
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Many later Open Brethren missionaries took the same stance, and included notable missionary pioneers such as George Muller, Dan Crawford, Charles Marsh, and Jim Elliot, Ed McCully and Pete Fleming.
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Open Brethren missionaries are still active in many parts of the world and there are assemblies in Chile, Dominican Republic, Peru and South Africa, among others.
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Open Brethren members believe that these assemblies are the result of an independent movement of the Holy Spirit in India.
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The Open Brethren movement has spread throughout the United States and Canada through evangelistic endeavours, immigration from the UK and Commonwealth countries, and by attracting Christians from other backgrounds with its emphasis on Biblicism, centrality of the Lord's Supper and equality of all believers under Christ, as well as its avoidance of denominational governance.
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In both Australia and New Zealand, Open Brethren have been embarrassed by negative publicity surrounding the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, a hardline branch of the Exclusive Brethren, which some defectors have accused of being a cult.
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Christian Missions in Many Lands, in the United States, Missionary Service Committee, in Canada, and Echoes of Service, in the United Kingdom, serve as support agencies for Open Brethren missionaries, helping with logistics and material support.
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