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Originally Posted by alwayslearning
There are many examples but two more come immediately to mind of this sort of thing:
1. A coworker in southern California who became outspoken to other elders and coworkers about Philip Lee's involvement in LSM being a problem was sent to a small church in another part of the country. It was so sudden and the contrast from where he was to where he was sent was so vivid it raised many eyebrows and of course there was a story to go along with it i.e he was burdened from the Lord, etc. (This occurred after Max incident and before late 1980's.)
2. A coworker from southern California was sent to a church on the east coast. He and an elder already there could not get along. Eventually it was impossible for them to work together so he was sent to another city because "the Lord burdened him to migrate for His move on the earth, etc." (This occurred before Max incident.)
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I was commenting on the idea of a "lampstand" as the LSM-affiliated churches call them - local testimonies of the universal Body of Christ. But I was cluttering up someone's personal testimony thread (they didn't seem interested in engaging any of my ideas) so I felt it might be proper to move my comments over here.
What typically happens in the LSM-affiliated local churches is that they'll give a few verses and say, "this is the lampstand". But they don't critically engage what actually happens on the ground in the LC, as seen above, or what has actually occurred in Christian history, as seen below. Instead you get the "Christianity became degraded and we recovered the proper church life" story with a few verses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
But what I was trying to address was the idea of a "lampstand" or local expression of the Church. When one delineates a lampstand, one perforce delineates what is not, and in this case that's all but one's own group... my question was to ask, how one does that? What criteria are used? It seems to me that one's inclusionary criteria will include others, and one's exclusionary criteria will exclude oneself.
For example, how do we know there was no lampstand in Ethiopia before the LSM arrived? There were believers there since the book of Acts was written. At what time therefore did the lampstand get removed, until the LSM re-established it?
Or Geneva and Bern, which had one church per city, strictly enforced I might add, under Calvin's auspices - if that's not a "proper lampstand" then what is? Especially since Calvin is listed as a "minister of the age" in LSM lore. At what point then did Geneva and Bern lose the lampstand? Or the Puritans in New England for that matter - they never tolerated any but one church per city. If this wasn't a lampstand then why not?
Ultimately it seems to be, when we do it, it's a lampstand but with anyone else it's not. There are then two sets of criteria, one used for our group and one for everyone else.
If "degradation" is the exclusionary criteria, then what of Daystar, Phosphorus, and Overseas Christian Stewards? What of "Phillip Lee is the Office"? If operational purity is one's defining characteristic, then how can one stand? Witness Lee wanted others to overlook his "messy kitchen", so why couldn't he overlook the rest? One must be consistent with applied criteria, else one's subjective experiences become untethered from objective reality and become absurdist fantasies.
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My point was that whatever your criteria for "proper ground" or "proper standing" will eventually be found to include others (thus other lampstands), or whatever exclusionary criteria of "degradation" will eventually be applicable to yourself as well, and the removal of your lampstand.