Quote:
Originally Posted by alwayslearning
The downside of this is if the elders or pastors or whatever they're called go off the deep end doctrinally, financially, morally etc. Who to turn to? But I think with mobility and communications the way it is today people are savvy enough to know what's what and will just leave and go elsewhere if things go awry.
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The error the LRC made was to equate their congregation with the whole church in the city. Naturally this led to the reasoning that leaving their congregation was to severe your relationship with the whole church, so the reasoning was you had to stay through thick and thin.
However, you can leave a congregation, but you can never really leave the church. That's the Lord's wisdom. The church is everywhere. Any group can claim to be part of that church, but no group should claim to be the most legitimate, or worse, only legitimate manifestation of it.
Any believer needs to be prepared for the possibility that things could go south on their congregation to the point that an exit is the prudent course.
Church-hopping and having no commitment is one extreme; saying there is never a good reason to leave a congregation is the other. The Bible never tells us we have to be prisoners of wacko elders who themselves are prisoners of wacko "apostles," simply because those wackos claim to own the "local ground" and are "the Lord's recovery."
That's just wacko. But it's amazing how many still believe it.