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Originally Posted by Terry
Igzy, There is a principle in the Bible. There may have been periods where there seemed to be a right application, but the pride in man always sunk what seemed good. We have it in local church history, Brethren istory, etc. It's because of disagreements and pride, that brings about denominations in all Christianity. As a result of disagreements is there an inability to recieve brothers and sisters.
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I think believing everyone needs to be following the same set of elders over a whole city is detrimental to receiving the believers in that city. Seems to me we have to also acknowledge that the Lord is working among them in the groups they happen to be in, perhaps in some ways better than our own, even if those groups are not organized the way we'd like.
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About one church in a city, we should be clear between church and assembly. Couldn't there be many assemblies in a city, but one church as the expression? Not to be confused with one single assembly claiming to be the sole expression, but many assemblies.
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Well, seems like this is just making the city church a sort of mini invisible, city-wide "universal" church. This is fine, I suppose, assuming you don't insist on one set of elders over the whole city.
The problem, as you can surmise from my posts, is not the
idea there is one church in a city. The problem comes in when you try to organize that ostensive church with a specific set of elders and make the claim "these are the elders over the whole city." As I have said ad nauseum, how do you know that? My posts on this have probably grown tiresome to some, but that annoyance could be solved by providing an answer. No one has.