Unregistered

Two (different) thoughts:

First, if I read Canfield's post and interpret his definition of "ground of locality" as ALL the teachings and practices every promulgated by the LC, then there is really no end of ways I could tear into the article (really, I started a word doc with his quotes and my comments....which I'll spare you all). But we may be assuming to much to impute all that to his definition. He hasn't said much more than all the believers in a city are the church in that city - and we should stand on that, not excluding others. There is a difference between "not excluding others" versus "y'all are wrong but WE'RE ON THE GROUND". Again, there MAY be a distinction between his argument here and the LC practice.

Second, the statement in the article, "There is absolutely no exception to this pattern in the New Testament." I am still not certain why this matters. The new testament does talk about Judaizers and false prophets entering in. But these mostly talk about the negative and damaging influence of pre-Christ Judaism. Otherwise, Christianity was NEW. Of course there aren't varieties and groups springing up in EACH locality! There were dangerous INFLUENCES (both personalities and concepts), but not RIVAL groups claiming exclusivity. Thus, even if the NT patter is UNIFORM, that does not give rise to a prescriptive point.

Finally (and relatedly), meeting separately does not mean a divergence from the broad definition of the "local ground" (this goes to my first point). The fact that I meet with you because you have classical music and austerity in worship does not mean I violate the "local ground" just because you meet separately and prefer a folk-music based free group. Now, if I say that you can't join our group unless you adhere to non-essential teachings, that's a separate issue. But meeting separately comes about for many reasons other than "oneness" issues.