Quote:
Originally Posted by Meribah
When I was growing up in an evangelical church, some of us young people would ask, "How can newly saved people learn about the Lord enough from the Bible if no one is there to teach them?" They answered, "The Lord is faithful to guide a seeker to the food he needs in the Bible for his maturity level at that time." Made sense then. Makes sense now. I reject any mediator between me and the Word. Everyone else should also.
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I've known people that only read the Bible for them self without teachers and they are in most cases lacking even the basic doctrinal foundations or it takes them years to achieve the kind of growth that a person under a teacher would achieve. The Spirit is not a replacement for human teachers, theologians, Sunday School etc and I think any one of those highly educated doctors and pastors who wrote the "open letter" would agree.
What's the point of "Sunday school" then? This idea that we don't need teachers is a modern one, not found in the early church period, or in the Bible. The disciples of Jesus themselves had disciples under them, and these had disciples under them. Jesus established a pattern of discipleship which continued into the early church period.If a person has a teacher they can grow in their knowledge of God much faster than on their own.
There are teenagers in the local church who know the Bible better than a person in the denominations who has attended church all their lives for decades and being only drip fed by the pastor's sermons (which in many cases are not even biblical, being merely only instructional or concerned with ethics or social justice issues etc). This is also evident by the fact that a young person can deliver a biblical message in the meeting, almost as good as any adult, whereas most teenagers in any local denomination would struggle. Two reasons for this - the teenagers are treated like adults and expected to read the Word like everyone else (rather than play games), and secondly unlike in the denominations, the meeting environment encourages people to overcome their shyness and speak.