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Originally Posted by Evangelical
Hold on a minute. I never claimed "one set of leaders" doctrine and the LR does not believe that.
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Sure it does. The LCM believes there is one church per city and each church has one set of coordinated elders, usually with one lead elder.
This leads to the following problem. What if there are two groups in the city and each claims to be the city church with its own set of elders and each set of elders is convinced the other set should submit to them. How does this get worked out?
I'll tell you how the LCM handles it. They go with the elders loyal to LSM. Now there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the Bible that suggests that a church's validity as a church can be based on its loyalty to some ministry, even if that ministry is considered of an apostle. Paul appealed to churches to follow him, but he never suggested that if they didn't he would come in and set up a new church in that city with people loyal to him in charge. NEVER. Yet this is EXACTLY what LSM does, and has done it time and time again.
Of course, ideally the groups would learn to cooperate. But there is nothing suggesting that either of them has to relinquish the reins of what they feel the Lord has commissioned them with to another group of leaders. This is where the legalistic city church model of the LCM breaks down. Its simplistic thinking says "We meet as the church in the city, so we are." But if another group meets as a church in the city, why aren't they it too? Why do LCM churches always give themselves the nod?
This has happened around the world. It happened in Toronto. It happened in Columbus, Ohio. It's happening in San Francisco where last I heard there were four churches meeting as the church there. Now, which one is the real McCoy? The LSM-loyal LCM has a tricky way of dealing with this. They say "Aha, but genuine churches have fellowship with the other churches. So they trump up some charges against the groups not loyal to LSM that they don't have proper fellowship with other churches (meaning the ones they approve of) and voila! they've invalidated them.
So the bottom line with LSM-loyal LCM is they think they have the inside track on deciding which churches are valid and which aren't. They can validate or invalidate any church based solely on it's loyalty to them. It's a neat trick. But it's complete baloney. There is no precedent in the Bible for a movement of churches having the final say on what are churches and what aren't. And it's easy to see why the Lord would never allow such a thing.
Which brings us to the ultimate error of the LCM. Somewhere along the line they decided they could and were supposed to determine what is a church and what isn't. But there is not one instance in the NT where anyone makes a negative determination that some group of Christians is not a church. The Bible does not give us enough information to make such a grave determination about a group. We are not wise enough to do so. The LCM thinks it is, but this is self-deception. One would think, having made such a grave error time and again, they would at least look at the fruit of it, see the damage they inflict by their history of playing their bullying king-of-the-hill in cities all over the world, using the courts to wrest the legal name of their churches "without a name" away from groups they don't like, and other dirty tricks, all backed and supported by LSM. But they don't.
But run-of-the-mill LCMers are ignorant of these things. Why? Their leaders keep these ugly shenanigans hidden and tell the members they shouldn't be curious about them, and don't dwell in negativity, etc. Uh-huh.
By their fruits you shall know them. Go look at the fruit, Evangelical.