[Cal]

Only abstractions of the Church are purely spiritual entities.The Church as a whole, the Body of Christ, the Church in a city or region are all abstractions. All practical subsets of it, that is those with specific people who actually meet, interact or collaborate, are organizations.

This means that every practical local church, every ministry, and all other ways Christians choose to organize, even "Local Church Discussions" and “the Lord's Recovery, are organizations. None of them are purely spiritual entities. All of these “borrow” the realities of the ideal Church as a whole, but none of them own any of those realities exclusively or even in a superior way. They each are part of the whole, and manifest the nature of the whole, but none are the final word on what the whole is.

This was even true of Paul’s ministry. It was an organization. It was organized around Paul. He had co-workers and so forth. But all of them deferred to Paul. He was the leader. But this organization, as all are, was one of mutual agreement, not of compulsion. If a co-worker agreed to Paul’s request to serve with Paul, then that co-worker submitted to Paul, because that was the way that group operated. Paul did not draft anyone, he did not tell anyone they must serve with him. But if he decided someone should not serve with him, he could dismiss him. But he could not insist someone remain, nor condemn them for not doing so. Anyone could leave Paul, and if everyone did leave then Paul would no longer have group authority over anyone. Paul also clearly accepted that there were other legitimate organizations of ministry besides his. He recognized Apollo’s for one.

Membership in an abstract entity is true by definition. But membership in an practical organization is always voluntary. For example, I cannot choose to not be a member of the Body of Christ. Neither can I choose, if I'm living in Los Angeles, to not be a member of the Church in Los Angeles. But I can choose whether I meet with the organization on such-and-such street in LA which calls itself "the church in Los Angeles." And they are not the same thing.

However, if you agree to join or visit an organization, you agree to abide by its rules. But you are not obligated to join or remain in the organization. For example, Paul and Barnabas labored together. At one point they chose to go their separate ways. But in the record of this change in their working relationship, it is never implied that either one of them was wrong or rebellious. They simply disagreed and chose to go separate ways. Nee and Lee's assertion was that Barnabas was wrong and that is why the record in Acts doesn’t mention him anymore. But there is no proof text of that. The reason the record follows Paul and not Barnabas can only be said to be so because the chronicler, Luke, remained with Paul. Any other speculation is unfounded.

Witness Lee’s error, which he passed on to the current “Recovery” workers, was that he saw his ministry, movement and churches as the equivalent of universal, abstract, spiritual entities, which by their very definition Christians must belong to, rather than as the finite, temporal organizations which they have a choice whether to belong to.

Lee's view, of course, cannot be true. Such a system is recklessly presumptuous, and the damaging fruit of it is a fact of 70 years of history. Yes, when in a organization, we should obey the leaders. But we can choose to leave freely and are then no longer under their authority. Freedom of choice and conscience is always there. No one has the right to condemn anyone for leaving an organization, be it “the Recovery,” an LC church or Witness Lees’ ministry.

The One Publication, then, is a violation of this principle of free association that is a natural extension of our free conscience and choice to serve the Lord as he directs, not as some movement directs.