[UntoHim]

In the beginning……..
The term "pastor" is simply another translation of teacher or elder. They are all interchangeable in the New Testament. There is solid evidence that the original apostles had originated a system (for lack of a better term) of choosing, training and mentoring young men for leadership in the churches. There were established requirements. It is my belief that none of the apostles just pulled these requirements out of a hat - they themselves were chosen, trained and mentored by the Lord Jesus himself. Then it was a matter of "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you" (1 Cor 11:23). Then young men such as Timothy in turn selected, trained and mentored the next generation. As the centuries passed, man did what man always does….he left the path established by God himself, and instituted a corrupt system which is, to one degree or another, still with us today.

However…….
Those who have advocated a church without official, trained and educated leadership are seeking a kind of utopia which has never existed in church history, and I suggest never will. I think this is one of the major flaws in Watchman Nee’s ecclesiology – that he thought he and his followers could simply ignore and bypass 1900 years of church history and start all over again. A nice thought, but totally naïve on his part. We know from recorded history that, despite his good intentions, Nee ended up surrounding himself with many men who were not necessarily beholden to God and his Word, but rather they were man pleasers, simply and fully beholden to the person and work of Watchman Nee. Then when Nee was no longer available, the wolves among the flock could take advantage of the situation. Nee was the only strong shepherd….there were no officially selected, trained and educated men to go forward as the next generation.

Fast forward to the beginnings of The Local Church movement in the USA…….
The dynamic I described above repeated itself here in America, but this time without the advantage of starting out with someone with the genuine heart and altruistic intentions of Watchman Nee. We now know that Witness Lee did not arrive upon our fair shores with the same genuine heart and altruistic intentions, in fact there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. I will not get into all the gory details at this point….they are well documented on this and other places on the Internet. Witness Lee, not being educated, or allowed to be challenged and balanced by any of his contemporaries (even within the Movement itself, much less within Christianity in general) ended up compounding and greatly magnifying the errors of Watchman Nee and the Little Flock….with the disastrous results we now see before us in The Local Church of Witness Lee.

And tying this into the original question posed by ToGodAlone…….
Witness Lee ended up compounding and magnifying one of Nee’s greatest errors – surrounding himself with, and then appointing into leadership, men who were not beholden to God and his Word, but rather simply and fully beholden to his own person and work. We see this dynamic in full blossom in the Local Church today – a religious system with a fully developed hierarchy (at the top of the pyramid the Blended Brothers) , and even their own faux seminary, which they have dubbed the “Full-Time Training”. So now we get to the rank-and-file members…. “the saints”. The same prejudices and haughty attitude that Witness Lee passed on to his early followers are now passed on to a new generation. (The Full-Time Training simply being a “crash course” - pun intended - that instills all the same prejudices and attitude into young people in a condensed period of time) As for all the older ones, well they need no more training at all. All the prejudices and haughty attitude is now in their DNA. I have been out of the system for many years and I still find myself muttering under my breath “poor, poor Christianity”.