Dear Gubei,
I don't have the time to address each of your points, but let me say I see you making several important ones. And let me say again that I don't see you as an LSM-sympathizer.
However, I do not see how expecting only one set of elders over a whole city does not open the door to abuse. And again, you cannot tell me how we know for sure who those elders are.
When I asked you about the church in Toronto, I was wasn't expecting you to know anything specific about that situation. However, if you cannot give me
general principles for how to know who the one set of elders are, then you wouldn't be able to tell me who the elders actually were in
any city, whether you were intimately familiar with it or not. Since you cannot give me general principles, then the ideal of one eldership is unsustainable. (As I said, appealing to apostleship just kicks the can down the road. We can't know for sure who the genuine apostles are either.)
My point is not to say that striving for practical oneness is a bad thing.
My goal is to say once you start expecting one eldership over one city you have actually built walls, not torn them down.
In other words, one eldership has a dark side of contention and oppression lurking. Christians need to have the freedom to move and meet as the Lord leads. The idea that they necessarily in the Lord's eyes need to remain under one eldership (which as I've said we have no way of clearly identifying) means they must endure whatever abuses those elders dish out. This is the LC legacy. Oh, they wax spiritual about how such an arrangement "deals with the flesh," and so forth. However, a lot of things deal with the flesh. Having typhoid deals with the flesh. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and try to contract it.
Besides history has shown the Lord doesn't work that way.
He always has worked with groups which have thrown off the bonds of oppressive leaders and followed HIM alone. A doctrine of one eldership does not allow for this. I cannot believe that he expects us in this age to live under a system which practically guarantees that corruption in leadership cannot be reformed.
Three facts about the local ground:
- The Lord didn't prescribe it.
- The apostles didn't prescribe it.
- The early church fathers didn't prescribe it.
So why would anyone else prescribe it?
Imagine this scenario. Suppose the Bible plainly prescribed the local ground. Suppose there was a verse that commanded "There should be one set of elders over one and only one church in each city." This is basically how the LCers think; they act like there is such a verse. But suppose there were? What would have happened when the Catholic church got control of the churches? Each local church would have been Catholic, directed by Rome.
The leaders of those churches would have had the strong Biblical ground to suppress and condemn any other gatherings. And reformers would have been less likely to have the boldness to break away. Or they would have had to declare themselves the one church in the city. And there would have been a mad rush to be "king of the hill" in each city. The Reformation either wouldn't have happened or would have occurred much differently.
No. I have concluded that the Lord was
very wise in not commanding one church per city. As I said, the Bible doesn't insist on it so God forbid that anyone else should either.