Eldership

[aron]

Originally Posted by Peter Debelak

I often think that we bracket Christ's words in the gospels to issues related to the "individual Christian life; while the epistles are about the "body" - and, in the way we treat them, never the twain shall meet. That is, we perceive (explicitly or not) the Epistles as going further that Christ's ministry...

Recently I've been wondering if we look to Christ's words enough in determining what our "corporate life" should be and how "practical" we should approach its implementation.

In fact, I've had a liberal little thought: what if we consider the Epistles to be circumscribed by Christ's words in the Gospels. As a hermaneutic to interpret the Epistles?

Does that change our understanding of a lot of the seeming prescriptions in the letters?

Peter,

For a possible strengthening of your notions, and to back up my assertion of "trampling the words of Christ to rush towards Paul", look at Don Rutledge's testimony in his "History" thread, on Ray Graver's program for "Serving the Ministry". Look at all the verses Ray chose to put together a "blueprint" for serving the ministry of Witness Lee.

All the verses are "deputy authority" verses from epistles to Colossians, Corinthians, Timothy, Titus, etc. Not one word from Jesus. No "love thy neighbor as thyself" stuff there. Just authority and submission. What happens with that blueprint, is that eventually when "love thy neighbor" and the institution created to "serve the ministry" come into conflict, who wins? The institution wins. And God's love for man, expressed in the person of His Son Jesus Chist, is nowhere to be found. We find instead an empty shell, an institution with lackies, flunkies, bureaucrats, social climbers, wanna-be's and assorted hangers-on. This is not restricted to the LSM version. But the LSM version, with its "Philip Lee is the Office" brand of nepotism, among other egregious abuses, could serve as the poster child.

Maybe we could mandate in all assemblies a 5-year moratorium, for the new ones anyway, of all the epistles, you know, the "solid food", and make them just read the Beatitudes over and over 'till they get that ingrained. Love one another, love one another, love one another....eventually when they get that they can discuss elders and deacons and whatnot. Let them drink the "pure milk" of the Word before they go trying to chew on steaks.

Just a little tongue-in-cheek humor there, folks.

[YP0534]

Just a side note, but I've discovered that some denominations look at Peter's verse in 1 Tim. 5:17 in a very different way.

They note that there are some who labor "in word and teaching" and others that only "take the lead well" and therefore devise that there are two classes of the office of "elder" - those that teach and manage and those that manage only.

So, I guess under Peter's reading, we'll have THREE kinds of elders: the elderLY, the teaching elders, and the managing elders.

Perhaps we can also devise a number of classes of believers and organize the assembling saints such that they will fit into an elaborate org chart? We should use different colors for each class and invent good names for each.

Just a suggestion, of course.

A modest proposal. :rollingeyes2: