Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxjobox
When I first encountered the local church in ‘74, I thought “wow, Christians meeting together apart from the nonsense, and people were free to speak what they felt were their spiritual experiences”. The elders were there so that things didn’t get too crazy, and we had fellowship with other like minded localities. Trainings were a gathering together to hear an older experienced brother share scripture. Slowly, that older brother became the benchmark for spiritual truth and authority. Some of the elders in my locality left because of this, and the others signed off the “local” for the Mr. Big rule.
One would think that the saints and elders in the locality would read the word and be guided by the Spirit to come to their senses and reject the great rule of “God’s Anointed”, but they walked away from the simplicity of meeting together as the local church, and I left because my individual conscience did not agree with the “corporate” word and spirit.
Since that time, I’ve had a hard time jumping into any Christian organization, because none seem to have the desire for that simple Christian gathering experience that I found in the early 70’s. It’s not that I’m without Christian fellowship, it’s just that the idea of turning over my conscience to an authority or organization is not there. I’m fine with reading scripture and discussing it, I’m fine with praying and seeking God’s guidance, I’m not fine with the organizations that seem to replace the “church” with their own dogmas. I would say this is a historical, major problem with the church.
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I think that one of the problems is that the LRC took what was being bridled by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians and reopened the spigot to create something that appeals to anyone who thinks the best meetings are a free-for-all.
Remember that in that letter, Paul pointed to the fact that "everyone has" a song, hymn, tongue, prophecy, etc., then went on to put limits on it all. Some of it was to suggest that there should be no tongue that would not be interpreted (presumably by someone who could actually understand the language — otherwise the "interpretation" could be whatever that person wanted to say no matter how unrelated to the alleged tongue it might be). The rest was to give boundaries for how many. Even to prophecying. I know we like to latch onto "all can prophecy," but Paul had already limited the number to prophesy to 2 or 3, so "all" cannot be understood as the whole congregation unless we ignore the restraint to only have 2 or 3.
But once we get the taste of popping up and saying something and getting that enthusiastic encouragement of "amen" — possibly more than once — it just "feels" like it was a spiritual thing and therefore
must be supported by the Bible.