Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Normal for the Jews perhaps, not normal for God's church. Jesus did not desire any sort of clergy-laity structure in the church, all were equal in importance and function. The historical fact is that there was no clergy class in the early church.
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That's not true at all.
The New Testament is filled with verses delineating organizational structure with elders and deacons. There were also many gifted ones named apostles, prophets, shepherds, evangelists, teachers. What do you think they all did in the meetings of the church? Sit in the back row and sleep?
Do you have any idea how narrow-minded and skewed your definition of "functioning" is? If someone stands up and reads a line from a footnote, you shout and proclaim that all the members can function, and then simultaneously you condemn the body of Christ for being dead .. Because they can't stand up in their assembly and read a footnote by WL.
Oh the hypocrisy! Why do you think so many of us have left? You have simply replaced the so-called "one-man-speaking" with the "speaking-of-one-man." That is no improvement at all! At least the former speak from the word of God.
I've been to many churches, including the LC's. There are always going to be some who sit silently in the meetings, and probably come only on Sundays. I saw that in all the LC's I visited. Who are you to categorically condemn them all? How do you know what they believe or how they function in the body of Christ? I saw far too many showy performances in LSM trainings to believe for a moment that they had the market on spiritual reality and functioning.