Quote:
Originally Posted by alwayslearning
This way of doing things was set up by Watchman Nee. His model was: the work is regional and has a center and the church is local and has no center. In his book The Normal Christian Church Life he indicated that coworkers could be considered as apostles with authority in the work and this authority included appointing elders. But workers had no authority in church administration - this was the sphere of the elders. Once appointed the workers needed to leave them alone and let them do their jobs locally.
Anyway obviously Nee's model didn't work if Witness Lee is any indication of it's fruit. Under him the work was not regional it was global. His practice in the Far East and elsewhere is that he ruled the work and the work ruled the churches. Period. Titus Chu in the GLA is just a miniature of that modus operanti.
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The appointment of elders was a serious failure in the Nee-Lee model. Yes, as both Nee and Lee taught, the Bible indicates that Titus (v1.5) was sent by Paul to appoint elders in Crete. But look at all the problems which develop based on that faulty exposition of the Bible ...
- Titus was not the apostle establishing those churches in Crete, Paul and Barnabas were. Titus was only acting as Paul's "deputy" to appoint elders.
- Then are we to believe that only a "deputy" of the actual establishing apostles can appoint elders?
- By Nee and Lee teaching this, they have made an event in Acts into a church law, allowing for no alternatives to exist.
- Since according to Nee and Lee, only the one who establishes the church can be considered her apostle to appoint her elders, hence their proof text (Titus 1.5) already violates their very teaching.
- Lee and Chu appointed elders in churches they had never even visited, let alone raise up thru the gospel.
- Lee and Chu removed elders in established churches, whose only "fault" was not bringing their saints to ministry conferences and buying ministry books.
- Nee and Lee's appointment of elders rarely considers the "approval" and recommendation of the saints, and the qualifications itemized by Paul in his pastoral books.
- Nee and Lee's appointment of elders takes no consideration of the succession of elders. What "apostle" is supposed to appoint elders when the original elders pass away.
- Nee and Lee's appointment of elders ironically coincides with Ignatius' establishment of bishoprics to appoint and oversee elders, which they vehemently condemned.
- Nee and Lee regularly condemned hierarchy, only to establish their own, using different phraseology to deceive the unsuspecting.
Like Darby and the exclusive Brethren before them, Nee and Lee ultimately invented a system more obnoxious than the system they loved to condemn. Lee loved to neutralize the spiritual concerns of the saints, by regularly whitewashing the truth. That by definition is hypocrisy.