Quote:
Originally Posted by TLFisher
PriestlyScribe, lets look at the churches that parted ways with Living Stream Ministry?
Have they collapsed? No they have not. Church in Toronto is still going on as are the churches in Moses Lake, Rosemead, etc to name a few.
I think the real reason why Local Church elders cling on to Lee's ministry, is the reaction Living Stream would respond with if a Local Church decided to drop the publications and just use the Bible.
The bottom line is money. Local Church affiliated with Living Stream Ministry only exist primarily for the benefit of Living Stream Ministry. Weekly church services are secondary to the ministry publications.
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I would suggest that even when looking at Toronto and the others, to some extent Lee was right. The "recovery" as he defined it somewhat collapsed in those places. Why? Because they were no longer under the thumb of the LSM and Lee's dream was no longer realized in those places.
Reminds me of some of the lyrics from the spoof song "Star Trekkin'." One verse has Spock speaking to Kirk:
It's life, Jim,
But not as we know it
Not as we know it
Not as we know it
It's life, Jim,
But not as we know it
Not as we know it
Captain
So it would be "It's an assembly, Lee, but not as we knew it . . . ."
Surely some went on pretty much as before while others morphed into something different. Maybe more like the dreaded Christianity that was previously vilified.
The real question should be "what is the 'Recovery' and is that really what should define us?"
So, as Obi Wan would have said, "From a certain perspective, Lee is right." His vision of the "true church" in the recovery is such that no matter how much a defecting church may continue on almost identically to what it was before, it has left a hole in the "recovery" and has spiritually collapsed. (Of course, only under Lee's meaning of "spiritually collapsed.")