Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
The church, here, can be the larger Christian audience; it can even be the Gentiles, for that matter. It means tell it in public. Tell it from the housetops. No more private covering. Look at the 'ekklesia' dismissed by the Ephesian city clerk in Acts 19:41. Full of Gentiles. Remember Jesus taught of "My church"; there was also a church which was not of Jesus. It meant gathering, assembly, convention of persons for some purpose, religious including but not exclusively Christian. Only with the passage of much time did it become exclusively associated with Christian assembly(s).
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I agree with this. If your brother won't hear you, get another brother, and then eventually "go public." How "public" depends on the offense. If you both meet together, then go to the elders. If you don't meet together, then find some elder brothers, or perhaps sisters.
In the Recovery system,
locality is basically a farce. In Nee's early ministry, he claimed that the highest church government was the local elders. In Nee's later ministry, however, he found the "Jerusalem principle" was more advantageous, where those at headquarters (under his direction, of course) could and regularly did overrule local decisions. Lee followed the same course of action in Taiwan. Then he came to America, and repeated what he had been trained to do. Eventually all the elders who do remain learn to make no decisions on their own, fearing the horrible "independent" label, and thus becoming almost useless to the great Shepherd of the flock.
So what does it mean to "
tell it to the church" in the recovery system today? It simply means to "tell it to the Blendeds" in Anaheim. This regularly occurred in the leadership under Lee, well back to the '70's. Lee used to operate under what I call the "
the law of first complaint," in other words, Lee would believe the dirt he heard without any further investigation. Why? Because it was useful to him. Titus Chu often complained about this, but unfortunately he operated the same way in the GLA. If LC leaders really believed in "
local" churches, then they would
never get involved in LC matters. It was
never any of their business.
The unfortunate side effect of this non-Biblical management style was the endless suspicions and spying on one another, especially among the leaders. Why "go to your brother" personally, when you can "tell it to the church" by going directly to the Maximum Leader himself, scoring a few personal brownie points, embellishing the mud-slinging, and hoping that your rival "gets it" during the next get together. During many times in our history, "sleeper cells" arose, acting promptly on coded words from the podium, and fueling the rumor mill with fresh dirt.
If
Evangelical really cared for Matthew 18.15-18, he would listen to what we are saying, examine what really has happened in the Recovery in the light scripture, and "consider his ways."