Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
I admit to being biased (probably only God is "fair and balanced" -- see Jesus' retort in Matthew 19: "Only God is good"). So I will lay my bias out front. I think that we should organize ourselves only as much as is absolutely necessary, and leave the practical stuff to God.
Leaders, i.e. vectors of the Holy Spirit, will surely emerge. But we should let this occur as the Lord sees fit. The only thing that matters is the move of the Spirit. Creating vested leadership positions will lead only to vested interests, contrary to the Spirit. Eventually our vested interests will lead us to serve the creation, not the Creator. Because, as I mentioned at the start, we are biased.
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aron, while your 4 examples all sound so exciting (
MacDuff no doubt will cheer the accent on the supernatural), the fact is that the Bible, old and new, honestly records it all. It has good leaders and bad, and good leaders who do bad. It has enthralling stories of individual heroes (eg Hebrews 11) and stories of the mundane in structured environments (eg busybodies going house to house.) I frankly think that our Christian walk is much the same. We each need wonderful testimonies of spectacular times with Jesus alone as we plod along the routine drudgery of church.
Our God is much bigger than any structured format, and, of course, that is the background we have emerged from. Witness Lee had his vision of a "glorious church" and, according to his own words, did little more than to replicate Laodicea. God can meet us where we are at, whether all alone or just another dumb sheep in the herd.
Regardless of how we now view "the church," and I know as well as any how badly this can turn out, still the breath of God wrote of and to assemblies of believers with their elders and deacons. The writings, however, gave little instruction on exactly how do we "do church." Where are salaried clergy, where are mortgages, where are political rallies, where are weekly bulletins? The list is endless, and if our walk is wrapped up in these "extras" then we might miss it all.