Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry
Yes, for the sake of argument, debate, point/counterpoint, etc, suppose the loca churches did practice the ground of locality and were not based on the ministries of Witness Lee or Titus Chu, I believe what you would have is not a ministry church, but something resembling a community church.
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At any time in there history in the U.S. were the LCs not ministry churches? If so how often did they go and take Lord's Table with other Christians not "on the ground" i.e. not meeting with them? Did they join with other Christians in projects to help the the poor in their communities? Did they attend conferences by speakers outside their LC system? How often did these kind of things happen?
If we want to talk about a other definition of the "ground of locality" than great: all Christians in a location are part of the church. Fine. Most Christians believe this to be true already. That's nothing new. Will they accept only the LC meeting as such? Nope. Will they accept the eldership of the LC as the only one in their location? Not gonna happen. And it's not gonna happen for very good reasons and I think that's why it's not taught in the NT. (E.g. what do you do when you have a Witness Lee and his son Philip on your hands? "Maintain the oneness"?)
And those like David who want to turn something sometimes descriptive into dogma might as well say we should all shave our heads, make a vow and go to Jerusalem because that describes what Paul did!