Quote:
Originally Posted by countmeworthy
Always learning, to my knowledge, every organized church has a leader with the power you mentioned. They are called pastors, bishops, evangelists, prophets, apostles. They are called the 5 fold ministry. Some "churches" have them. Most have one or two....at least this is true in my neck of the woods. Oh
Let's not forget the "Drs." in the church. I am not referring to physicians.
Perhaps this is why Nee and Lee steered away from the titles mentioned in Ephesians..only to open up another can of worms, sad to say.
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IMHO in Ephesians Paul is not discussing titles but functions based on giftedness and training. Of course some people turn this into official formal titles but I don't think that was Paul's intent.
I am most familiar with the use of the term pastor as most churches seem to have at least one but often several. The LC system pretended not to have pastors by using the term elders instead. As usual with them it was merely a language game.
Few churches I am aware of have a system wide MOTA with power over the local leadership and over the curriculum of the individual churches. And most pastors do not consider themselves as the MOTA and neither do the members of the church they pastor. Even at the local level their power is limited with checks-and-balances, accountability etc measures in place.
If we took the MOTA teachings and practices of the LC system to most let's say community churches out there and tried to apply them we would be laughed out of town. Certainly nobody I know would accept this. It's only in a tightly controlled closed system that such a thing could take hold and flourish.
BTW as you probably know the Brethren writer G.H. Lang wrote a book titled "The Churches of God" which Witness Lee hated because it was a polemic against having a federation of churches. Lang was against this because he saw what it did to the Closed Brethren with Darby as their MOTA. He plainly stated the advantages of independent churches at the local level who were not beholden to any extra local organization, ministry, MOTA etc. No wonder Witness Lee hated it! Imagine if such an idea was actually implemented in the LC system. The damage Witness Lee created would be limited to Anaheim and maybe Taipei at the most. His ministry and the current LSM publishers thereof would be put in their proper place as one among many that local independent churches could use or not i.e. Witness Lee and now the LSM staff would have zero influence or power over any church.