Re: Premise
CMW,
Thanks for your reply.
Regarding discipling the nations, to disciple means "to make followers of." So the word implies to convert and to shepherd. It never meant simply to "get saved." If we meet a weak Christian and help him or her back to following the Lord, that's discipling.
As to the "building of the church," I think from our standpoint it mainly means to build up believers. The church really is just the believers.
When a typical LCer stands up in a meeting, waves his fist and proclaims, "We need to build the chuuuuuuurch!" I doubt he is thinking about the believers. I think he has in mind an idealized thing--the "church"--a fuzzy, abstract spiritual entity--that is oddly distinct from the people in the room. Really what his is saying is that he is for an ideal, an idea, not that he is for the people around him.
That's a big, big error, but it's subtle. The church is just the believers. When you say you are building up the church, what you should mean is you are building up Joe and Frank and Mary and Susan and those other Christians you know. There is no church to build up outside of them.
So from our standpoint, building up the church is mainly just building up believers. But it also includes the things we do to make Christian community cohesive. Certainly if we are in a particular church it makes sense to build up that church as a group--to do the things that strengthen the group as a group. However, even that can be taken too far, to where we see the "group" as more important than all the members.
This is the error the LC has made. In their worldview, the church as an idea or ideal is more important than the church itself. Sort of like when Linus told Lucy, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand."
Last edited by Cal; 10-03-2008 at 02:21 PM.
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