[aron]

The Local Church is a guanxi network, a Christian personality cult that reflects and expresses the culture that gave it root and nourishment. The Bible is of interest, even intense interest, inasmuch as it's useful to the maintenance & propagation of the network; otherwise it's ignored or even dismissed as "fallen" and "mixed sentiments" and "natural concepts".

The reason they don't see their own fallen natural concepts is because seeing would be detrimental to the network. "I'm proud to be an ostrich with my head stuck on the sand" is how one current leader once put it. That's how he got where he is today. If he saw, he'd be put out.

Why join such a network? Well, for one it gives the immediate impression of power. The network is sold as the great success, and all you have to do is join & that success becomes by association your own. Just ignore the man behind the curtain. And ignore the cries of the abused. And ignore those who apparently "couldn't make it". And ignore scripture that doesn't line up with the master plan. And ignore. . .

The gospel is Jesus Christ. The testimony of the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our life, our focus, our aim. The rest is, at best, a distraction. At worst it becomes a stumbling, an invitation to a kind of deliberate, self-conscious myopia, where the network is all. There may be word-games, with "church" versus "ministry initiatives", but in the LC it always comes back to the network and one's relative standing therein. And the testimony of Jesus is suborned. As awareness says; I got my hat & t-shirt; paid the price for joining it.