[aron]

Originally Posted by Igzy

So the problem with the LC model as held by Canfield is with this matter of administration. It's easy to talk about one church in the city. Many Christians wouldn't argue with this. The problem comes in when one insists that the city church must be organized and must operate in a tightly-related way under one tightly-coordinated administrative body. This is a problem because it requires clear identification of which group of administrators is the correct one. And that is impossible. It's impossible because there is always the possibility of disagreement, because who is to say definitively who the correct administrators are?

Igzy, I give you credit for repeatedly making this point. I finally get it. The "one church per city" metric is a trojan horse to allow centralized control (masquerading as 'administration'... per Paul's request for 'order in the church', etc) over the flock.

I didn't get your point until just now.

Originally Posted by Igzy

A gaping hole in church history is the lack of any record of the church fathers speaking of the Ground of Locality or of one administration per city. It appears they just didn't look at things that way. My feeling is that the early church, though quite related informally, was much less tightly-coordinated than our LC-fed expectation suggests.

Also look at how 'ekklesia' was used. You will find additional "gaping holes". To make the scriptures conform to your "one church per city" metric, you have to translate away all those unhelpful times when the writers used it otherwise. Like Luke's account of Stephen's fabled "church in the wilderness" with Moses (Acts 7), or the city clerk dismissing the purely secular 'church' in Ephesus (Acts 19). You have an expectation of reality, which forces you to conform the Bible to your view, and not vice versa. You think you are seeing, and understanding, what the writers' original intent was in this case of the "ekklesia", but you are actually chopping off the unhelpful bits.

Originally Posted by Igzy

Or consider the seven churches in Revelation. Why weren't the letters sent to the elders or administration of those churches? Why were they sent to the "angel" (messenger) of the church?

Are we seeing a pattern here?

We are seeing a pattern of ignoring unhelpful considerations, like the ones you have raised. The "one administration" ignores them, and so does the flock, which have unquestioningly swallowed the "one church per city" rubric. "Because it's in the Bible", naturally.

And when you get Titus Chu engaging in blatant, oriental ancestor worship ("We owe our lives to Brother Lee") in a group that declares it is beyond human culture, the flock takes it quietly. You know, because there's only one church per city. It's in the Bible.