aron & YP,
I know I seem a little perturbed. I do not doubt that there are problems to be found in what we do with leadership. And today's leadership is all over the place in terms of how it is carried out.
If you think you can find something, then I'm all for it and will gladly take it when when it comes.
Yes, YP, I have become a little impatient. I understand the process of contemplation. I do not have an answer that I need to defend. But when it seems that there is perpetually a question about whether the appointment of elders may be some cause of a problem but never anything that supports it beyond being a question to ask, then it begins to come across as an innuendo that taints without being an established fact that can be discussed. (A sort of "when did you stop beating your wife" question.) I mention the Emerging Church "conversation" because they do not like to be called a movement since they are just discussing some questions about faith. But the same questions keep getting asked going on 20 plus years now, but when someone suggests an answer, they cry "foul," say they have not arrived at an answer, and keep everything in perpetual limbo as they converse. At some point, this discussion will become the same kind of unsolved "black hole" that many of the questions the Emergents ask have become.
I do not see Christ's life as being 33-1/2 years, or the fact that we are now almost 2,000 years since Christ as relevant to whether the question should simply remain on the table perpetually because you can't find basis to prove or disprove a hypothesis. "I understand you, but let us contemplate it some more anyway" is an OK answer. It surely is not a matter of my will over yours.
Do you keep doing research on the legal point for which there just doesn't seem to be anything? When do you stop? (rhetorical; no need to answer)
I'm not telling you to stop. Just suggesting that some boundaries be put on the inquiry. For me, those boundaries seem to have been exceeded. But then I am about to bow out (as if I hadn't done so some time back but refused to simply "go away"
).