Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
It doesn't matter how you parse it, or how theologically sound you think your group is. They have meeting places, whether owned or rented, a schedule of meetings, a way that they do meetings (in accordance with the LSM, all the way down to which song, or songs on occasion, will be sung) arrange to have electricity and water, and even a decision on what ministries will be acceptable for discussion. There is an organization. It is registered with the state and the city in which it meets.
The only way that there is no organization is if it has no rules (just right), no set meeting place or time, and whoever happens to show up at any random time in the same place (random, again) to read, study, pray, etc., about whatever moves them (and not the schedule maker). In that case I will agree that there is no organization.
Organization is a red herring. It is a form of equivocation in which you fail to use the word for the massive amounts of organization that always goes on, then quibble over whether certain minor things (that are not actually any different between the LCM and the rest of Christianity) are important and declare that you are not an organization. Maybe not in some very minor point. But you don't even compare your minor point to how other groups are with respect to that point. You compare that small minor point to all the regular stuff that the others do/have. As if that is the only organization you have.
You are comparing the pollution of various vehicles by pointing to the bicycle in he front yard compared to all the cars on the road. But you ignore that you also have cars. They are just not in the front yard at the moment. They are hiding behind the closed garage door so no one will know they are there.
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I agree there is organization, there must be, otherwise it is chaos. Consider Jesus was highly organized. The times, the donkey, the last supper, the cross, the details, everything was pre-arranged. But it was not an organization.
I am saying the local church is not "an organization". You cannot find anything called the Local Church (capital L and C) Organization, anywhere.