[Cal]

First, I see no reason to engage in rock fetches. For instance, you want to make this about people as if that were the point. It is not and seldom is. You recast the arguments in terms of people and personalities and you also make it personal with me.

I didn't make it personal. I just asked you to defend your point of view with better arguments. Did you ever think that the reason people don't go for the LCM is not because of their lack of purity but because of a lack of good arguments for it?

Now, how can I know that a sectarian spirit is operating in the church? Simple, open the phone book!

Again, you have defined this situation as sectarian. But it is not necessarily so. That's what I mean by a circular argument.

Sectarianism is not people meeting in multiple places and having multiple names. Sectarianism is some people saying that everyone should be like them and refusing to respect others' rights to believe and meet as they see fit as per Romans 12.

Sectarianism is not people living in different houses and having different names. Sectarianism is any of those families saying they are the only valid family.

I've never seen a time in my life when so many different kinds of Christians can come together and meet together and not make issues about secondary doctrines. That is the way I see the situation going more and more these days. And guess what? I see the hand of God in it too. Why can't you be happy about that?

And it is a fallacy of argumentation on your part because you cannot possibly know what the majority of christians are thinking.

If you can claim sectarianism (as defined by you admittedly) exists simply by a look in the phone book (you are showing your age there BTW ), then I can certainly make an assessment about non-sectarianism by my more varied, direct and personal observations. I read. I observe. I visit other churches. I talk to many other Christians. I think my assessment of things is reliable enough.

The fact is, Drake, we are never going to see a situation where all or even a majority of Christians in cities come under one group of elders wielding the kind of control the LCM does. It just isn't going to happen. (And personally I don't think that is what God expects or even wants.) So what are you going to do? Continue to find fault with them? Continue to see the glass half-empty. I just don't see the point of that. It's making the good the enemy of the (in your opinion) best.

And you hurt people by sending the message that if they aren't in the LCM they are somehow not right with God. You need to drop that. That's always been my point.