Quote:
Originally Posted by Drake
Okay, Aron. For arguments sake, let’s eliminate every one of those ministry initiatives. Poof, they’re gone!
Please describe, according to the biblical definition, what the work of ministry to the local churches looks like at that point.
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Poof they're gone hallelujah.
What does a biblical ministry in a local church look like? Good question.
Answer: it looks an awful lot like Jesus and the discipled ones in the 4 gospels. But careful! The "Jesus figure" in this setting is not Witness Lee, or some other guru. The only one with this role is Jesus himself.
Notice that Lee spent 60-70% of his efforts in the epistles, a conveniently-enough abstract setting for his jumping off into the imaginarium, into Bat Boy Theology, into la-la land. In this setting, Christ was whatever the ministry chose at that moment to satisfy the apparent need. "Today's Moses" - Today's Moses is Jesus. Read Peter in Acts 3:22,23 and Stephen in Acts 7:37. A prophet God has raised up, like Moses. You must hear him. Now, that corresponds to the Jesus of the gospels!
Another 20% or 30% is in the OT, mining for disjointed aphorisms and props for the imaginarium. For example, "re-plastered houses" means congregations that heard about Lee's machinations and his profligate sons, and needed leadership purges. All quite biblical, and all quite crazy. Or, "drunken Noah" - biblical, but Bat Boy-level whacko.
The gospels and the actual person of Jesus got maybe 10%. Where he could be fit in. Which wasn't often. I'll never forget the day the FTTA trainer told us, "Don't waste your time" with the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, who cannot repay you in this age. I was aghast, I was stunned. This sounded nothing like the Jesus of the gospels. It took me a couple more years to get the courage, but one day I walked out, with no housing, job, network. All gone, all swallowed by the ministry (i.e., LSM). But I had a dream & refused to give it up. I went into a shelter, got a temp job and kept going. And Jesus has met me, again and again, on the journey.