Open - Interactive Letter to The Co-Workers in The Lord's Recovery

[ACuriousFellow]

But we don't have to go that deep. It's rather silly to conflate the ground of oneness with the ground of the church. One is a spiritual matter that all believers share in a metaphysical sense as long as they are within the uniting bond of the spirit. The other is the ground of location which God clearly makes a big deal about in the word. Not only can we quote God literally saying this in Deuteronomy 12:11, but he implemented its practice in the book of Acts where we see the practical church life in each city, and the epistles, which were addressed to the ONE church in the ONE city that Paul was writing his letter to. Not ONE in the metaphysical spiritual sense, but ONE in location. Meaning there is only supposed to be ONE church per city.

-Jay

Again, it's not hard to prove that God wants a particular place of meeting. Deuteronomy 12:11 and the local churches in Acts and the Epistles. We also have verses such as Hebrews 10:25 which say directly to not forsake the assembly.

-Jay

Now I shall get to the heart of the matter, which I imagine from your repeated insistence on the assemblies mentioned in the epistles is what you are most anxious to hear a rebuttal to. To be honest, it is also the one I am most eager to present a rebuttal to because while in Lee’s estimation (and yours) it is an absolutely crucial doctrine for the church, it is, in my estimation and that of many others, a particularly harmful doctrine, among a few others, which has led to a toxic spiritual elitism amongst the congregations in the denomination known as The Lord’s Recovery (a.k.a. The Local Churches).

Lee’s main argument is the existence of a particular pattern in the New Testament: the naming of the congregations. We have several cities and their associated congregations to which we see epistles written to. Rome (Romans), Corinth (Corinthians), Galatia (Galatians), Ephesus (Ephesians), Philippi (Philippians), Colossae (Colossians), Thessalonica (Thessalonians). We also see a few more churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, where the churches of Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea are also given a spotlight. We have here a pattern. It is a pattern that Lee relies heavily on in order to support his particular doctrine of the ground of the church/oneness/locality. He further tries to support this argument by using verses such as Deuteronomy 12:11 in which we see God very explicitly commanding the Israelites to come to one very specific place of worship, and this would not be the first time the command was so very explicitly given. Therefore, Lee claims, that because the Lord sought one physical place of worship in the Old Testament which was within the boundaries of a particular city and because we see several churches named after the cities they are found in, this naming scheme must be a New Testament reality of God’s desire for a physical place of worship. As such, the only proper way to refer to our assemblies is by whatever city we are found in, and to turn away from this pattern would be as rebellious and dangerous as the Israelites turning away from the temple in Jerusalem as the one place of worship that unites God’s saints.

In response to this doctrine of Lee’s, I have two main points.

[ACuriousFellow]

First, we have the insistence that the Old Testament pattern, in and of itself, automatically justifies the notion that we should name our churches a particular way. I’ve already pointed out the major flaw in this line of thinking, that being the fact that there are several parallels made to the temple, God’s one place of worship and sacrifice in much of the Old Testament, and yet none of those New Testament parallels make reference to city boundaries. God gave very particular commands to the people of Israel regarding where to worship, and there were always major consequences for those who violated these commands. Again and again, the Lord and his people emphasize the importance of the temple in Jerusalem. Again and again the people are reminded of the need of this temple for the sake of all Israel. The need of the high priests and priests and articles and sacrifices. Judgement and wrath came upon the people of Israel when they neglected these things. Destruction and chaos descended upon all of Jacob’s descendants when God’s commands regarding the temple were not properly kept. Conversely, it was always at this temple that the ultimate, most effective, and most meaningful rituals were performed after its construction, and so emphatic was the Lord of the temple’s importance that even when it was destroyed, he insisted on it being rebuilt exactly where it once was. So crucial is this temple mount that many are convinced that the prophetic events to come will still involve it somehow even despite the establishment of the New Covenant. So much of the Old Testament is dedicated to very explicitly showing us the importance of this very specific place of worship and sacrifice, yet we have no such emphasis on the names of the assemblies in the New Testament. Lee claims that this principle of naming is just as crucial as the command the Lord gave in Deuteronomy, yet if it was so important, why does it not receive even 10% of the explicit attention given to the city of Jerusalem and the temple found therein? I would dare to say that it does not even receive 1% of the attention. In fact, nowhere, absolutely nowhere, do you see any explicit commands for naming the assemblies according to the cities they are found in. You see patterns, but not commands. If it was so crucial, if it was even half as crucial as Lee claimed it was, we would not just see patterns, but we would also see commands. We would see explicit commands. We would see desperate commands. We would see nauseatingly repetitive commands, and a command to not be divisive, a command to not divide yourself based on who baptized you, is absolutely not an explicit command to name yourself according to the city you are found in. To top this off, and to transition into my second point, this supposed command, really only a pattern, is broken by the apostle Paul himself on more than one occasion.

[ACuriousFellow]

We can see immediately in Deuteronomy 12:1-7 that the Lord declared that his people were to have one central place of worship. This command of having a central place of worship would lead to the establishing of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the building of the temple where the ark of the covenant would dwell along with the very presence of God. It was there at the temple that every Israelite was commanded to go for their sacrifices, and it served as a powerful, unifying symbol to the people of God. This immediately brings to mind an encounter Jesus had with a certain Samaritan woman. Near the end of their initial encounter, she makes a particular statement which draws an important response from the Lord in John 4:19-24. Here, Jesus declares that the age where God’s people worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem would come to an end, for the age in which God’s people worshipped in Spirit and in truth was coming. The one place of worship was no longer to be in the city or temple made by man, but the temple made by God. The martyr Stephen also declared this to the Jewish leaders in Acts 7:44-50. Paul declares something similar to the Athenians in Acts 17:22-25. The true, eternal place of worship would not and could not be a temple or city made by men, but rather that which is made by God. Paul makes a pretty solid statement regarding the temple of God in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17. The believers are the temple of God. We see it again in 1 Corinthians 6:17-20. And again in Ephesians 2:17-22. Peter also declared that we were the dwelling place of the Lord in 1 Peter 2:4-5. Likewise, sacrifices made in the temple of Solomon are paralleled by Christ’s sacrifice in a heavenly tabernacle as can be seen in Hebrews 9:11-14. Because of these Spiritual and heavenly realities, our ground of oneness comes not from arbitrary boundaries created by men, but rather the spiritual boundaries established by Christ. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20).

[ACuriousFellow]

This brings me to my second point. You see many people gathering in many churches, or assemblies throughout the New Testament, even within their respective cities. The church in Corinth existed, but so did the church in Cenchreae, a port district in Corinth (Romans 16:1). Further still, we have the church in Phoebe’s house (Romans 16:5), who was a deacon in the church in Cenchreae, which was part of Corinth and therefore part of the church in Corinth, which were one of the churches of Christ (Romans 16:16). In the same manner, we have the church in Nympha’s house (Colossians 4:15) and the church in Philemon’s house (Philemon verse 2). We see many layers within the church life, but not one of them defines our ground oneness save for the name of Christ. Whether you are the church in Phoebe’s house or the church in Cenchreae or the church in Corinth, you are only the church when you gather in the one name of Christ. Our ground of oneness, that which makes us the true body of Christ, is the one name of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the man in this video pointed out already, what the scripture says unites us as believers is the one Spirit, for we are called to one hope with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all (Ephesians 1:4-5). It is not the city in which we meet.

This pattern is established for convenience, not so that we should make it law, and even then this pattern is not based on the cities that the assemblies are found in, but which portion of the body of Christ the author is referring to. If the author was referring to all the saints in Corinth, they referred to them as “the church in Corinth.” If they were referring to all the saints found in the district of Corinth known as Cenchrea, they would refer to them as “the church in Cenchreae.” If they were referring to the saints in the household of Phoebe, they would refer to them as “the church in Phoebe’s house.” If the Lord truly cared so much about “locality” as Witness Lee claimed, if indeed this doctrine and principal of naming and location was so crucial and necessary for the proper establishment of a church, then the Lord would by no means have allowed one of his apostles to break the pattern as he did, and several times at that! As such, you find here a pattern. It is by no means a bad pattern, yet it is not a command. It is not worth condemning other churches solely based on the names of their meeting halls and refusing fellowship with them because of such a thing. It certainly does not merit Lee’s delusional accusations of rebellion that are heaped upon a congregation based solely on what they call themselves. It absolutely does not justify the divisiveness that is encouraged by Lee and the current leaders of The Lord’s Recovery.

Lee’s particular doctrine of the ground of the church/oneness/locality is not sound. It is not biblical. It is not healthy for the churches of God.