December 18, 2007
You've Made Up My Mind
It doesn’t do much good to question a friend’s choice in a fiancée. Once she’s made a commitment, she expects everyone to happily give a blessing. It doesn’t matter if you think she’s making a terrible mistake, her mind is already made up. My church will soon be electing new elders to serve along side the current elders. The three men recommended to the congregation are, “to be confirmed by ballot on January 13th.” Although membership is permitted to raise questions about a nominee prior to the election, we’ve already been told that those selected are to be confirmed. No doubt along with the confirmation they expect us to happily give our blessing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I remember the day Char folded her elder ballot in half and stuck it behind the hymnal in front of her. The elders had several spiritually mature men to consider, but once again, they rejected men of fine spirituality and chose men who were ideologically “on board” with themselves. After the whole affair at your church that followed, and all of the Bible study I did through the few years leading up to it, my respect for elders and preachers has changed. Except for three preachers and a few elders, it hasn’t fallen, but just changed.
-----The rolls Scripture gives to elders and preachers are very significant to the spirituality of the church. Their Scriptural place being a position of honor, high regard, and endearment is prime for great effect upon the body by example. Without even realizing it, people naturally follow examples within their social systems. And a church is a social system. If true spirituality is the concern of the elders and preachers, then simply by osmosis the people give greater concern to their spirituality. And almost as subtly, people sense the difference between spirituality and ideology. Though they may consciously accept ideological ploys as spiritual institutions, at levels of understanding below those they are not willing to expose, they know these are not. In this way, then, elders and preachers who become stuck on their own ideology, passing it off as spiritually imperative, unwittingly lead their congregations into self-deceit. Maybe the degrees of deceit are only minor, but it is deceit all the same.
-----Char could not handle that reality. So we went elsewhere in search of more honesty. What we knew before we parted fellowship with those at your church, we experienced by the time we arrived where we now fellowship. Every man has his own ideologies, and few are willing to treat them without bias amongst the ideologies of everyone else. Few men understand that the leadership rolls given by Scripture are rolls by which to lead those around you into love, joy, peace, patience, perseverance, kindness, generosity, hospitality, goodness, faithfulness, sympathy, gentleness, mercifulness, godliness, self-control, knowledge, and more. Their roll is to assist in the fitting of the stones into the structure of the holy temple. But they almost all have presumed that their roll is the actual hewing of the stones, and worse yet, their actions indicate a sound belief that their ideology is the pattern for the shaping of each stone. Their actual godliness was supposed to be a demonstration of the pattern.
-----I understand the enthusiasm of the elders and preachers stuck on their own ideologies. God bless them; they are trying, and they are doing much for the Lord alongside the damage they are doing to Him, just as I am. And maybe my respect for their accomplishments is not high, but I respect them for their efforts, because the Lord is able to extract benefit from even the worst of our efforts. So whoever they select as elders, whether or not with the rubber-stamping of the congregation, at least there will be some effort and benefit to the Lord amidst some amount of damage. He has a purpose for it that will be sorted out and made apparent on That Day, if not sooner.
Post a Comment