[HERn]

Here's something else from the F. F. Bruce document.

"The New Testament bears ample witness to the centrifugal tendencies in apostolic Christianity: we have only to think of the tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians, between legalists and libertarians, between the rank and file who were content with the ‘simple gospel’ and the spiritual elite who preferred what they imagined to be more advanced teaching."

The spiritual elite...sounds like the leaders of the LR.

"The church is the dwelling-place of the Spirit, and ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (II Cor. 3:17). Structures of ministry, government and order are of value so long as they provide vehicles for the free moving of the Spirit; when they cease to do that, they should be replaced by more suitable ones. Whatever at any time helps the church to discharge her proper functions―the worship of God, the strengthening of fellowship within her membership and the witness of outgoing and self-giving love to mankind―that is what matters. When the church thinks more of her status than of her service, she has taken a wrong path and must immediately retrace her steps. As the church’s Lord was (and remains) the Man for others, the church must be the society for others, the community of the reconciled which is at the same time the instrument by which the reconciling grace of God in Christ is communicated to the world. All that enables the church to be this is true development; all that hinders the church from being this is departure."

Wow! When a church thinks more of it's status than it's service...this sounds like the church of the blended brothers.