|
 I
am told that in the ACC Preacher - Elder workshop some
last-generation arguments were resurrected in defense of the
sponsoring church arrangement. The missionary society is an “extra
- Biblical” organization, we were told, but the sponsoring
church “creates no extra - Biblical organization.” I have a
feeling this generation can see right through that. Government,
business, and churches have pushed credulity to the saturation
point by offering the same old institutional or bureaucratic
mess under a new name — or as a subdivision of some highly
respected branch of the establishment.
What
was the “missionary society” in the first place? A means or
medium through which a plurality of churches could function as
one— in evangelistic or benevolent projects. The executive
board received funds “in trust” and dispensed those funds
for the proposed work. That was its essence; but its “domination
of the churches” (which so many preachers parrot when
condemning the society) are abuses of its intended role. Today
the sponsoring church arrangement is just another means or
medium through. which a plurality of churches function as one.
Even abuses are alike, as one can see by the recent history of
the Highland church in Abilene.
Elders
of the sponsoring church occupy a Biblical role while overseeing
their own flock and dispensing the funds of that flock in
scriptural work. They take on an “extra-Biblical” role when
they become the executive board which receives and dispenses
funds of contributing churches for some proposed “churchhood”
work. In this
|
|
role they are the heart of an “extra
-Biblical organization” — and the error is not erased by
virtue of their continued role as local elders.
By
law, the jurisdiction of our local sheriff is Burnet county. If
the law is ignored, and our sheriff either takes or is given
state-wide functions, do we change the facts of the case because
he continues as the Burnet County sheriff? Until the law is
changed, he would be guilty of “extra-legal” (or, more
bluntly, of illegal) activity.
All
attempts to find diocesan or “brotherhood project” elders in
the scriptures have failed. “Alms” sent to a dependent
church (needy saints, 2 Cor. 8:) is certainly not the same as
funds pooled in an independent church, whose elders serve as
executive board for a world-wide work; and thinking people can
see that. But the blind and/or weak-hearted are being led (by
prejudice and false argument toward a “restructured” church.
I
do not mean this is a conscious goal of institutional brethren
generally. Most of them would recoil at such a charge — and
rightly so. I do not believe our brethren of the last century
deliberately led the church into what this generation developed.
But zeal without knowledge, or without a willingness to apply
the basic principles of “congregational independence” to
their inter-church plans, prepared the way for the restructured
Disciples denomination. And “sure as God made little green
apples” today’s “sponsoring church” multi-church
projects are “extra-Biblical” and wrong.
[Previous
Article]
[Next
Article]
|
