January 28, 2008
Shipwrecked
Since opening the door to allow homosexual clergy and lay officers, the Presbyterian Church (USA) continues to lose churches from the denomination. The Associated Press reports, “Members of the largest church in the Pittsburgh Presbyterian district have voted to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) for a more biblically conservative denomination.” Excuse me…more biblically conservative. What exactly does that mean? I’d say this church is leaving because they recognize the need to be biblically truthful and doctrinally sound. Paul tells Timothy that people who reject sound doctrine have shipwrecked their faith. (1 Timothy 1:18-20) Is it any wonder that churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination are jumping ship?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----We live in truly perplexing times. Not that it is perplexing to see so many stooges in places of power over the churches. But it is perplexing to know how to respond to them. The leaders at our church decided to take measured response, a sort of continued back pressure, I suppose. But about those stooges at the top of PC-USA, many folks would say you are not even to bid “Good morning,” to ones maintaining such disgusting moral views and calling themselves Christian. So we had a painful exodus from the church. And, as you pointed out, entire churches are bailing out of the denomination also. Yet, these Presbyterian Churches are a piece of His body wracked with a fever. A doctor does not throw his patient into the river, then go to serve the healthy. A stand upon the Word by those churches which acknowledge and obey the Word might be more beneficial to the denomination than a cut and run move.
-----But then, does the denomination need help? Is this fever any different than the fever that has been running in all denominations since there have been denominations? Where in the Word of God is there the institution of a denominational structure for the church? Where does the Word teach me or you that we must approach the Lord according to the theology and the precepts of men who think themselves to be significant enough to control churches? Nowhere. The Word of God teaches individual relationships beside each other, serving each other, reaching out in unison. That is the church. It teaches of men grown up well in the Lord being examples to the flock of the new life, its gracious attitudes, and its many services to the Lord. It discloses the prophets given to the gathering, spreading insights and welding the Word to the events of life. It speaks of the preachers and evangelists given to inspire, encourage, and convince men through the logic of the Word, and of the teachers who build into the minds of others knowledge of and about the Word. The Bible provides for the deacons to assist in the flow of supplies from the gathering to meet needs among the gathering. And although the Bible gives authority to the elders, it is clearly not an authority of rule, but an authority of safeguard.
-----For Jesus Himself said that we were to call no man on Earth “Father.” But everyone who desired to be great had to be a servant all the more. Paul teaches firmly of being convinced in your own mind about issues having no direct or clear teaching in the Bible. But he also teaches of keeping that conviction between yourself and God. He taught about pleasing your neighbor, and looking to the interests of others. He was adamant about making every effort to do what makes for peace and unity among us. His concept was agreement with one another, not one agreeing with the other. All of these things, and more, the Holy Spirit wrote into the Word not just for what we call the laity, the followers, but for the leaders as well. They are just as much as we are not to make judgments, not to insist on their own ways, not to look to their own interests, nor to command from their own convictions. It is not their ideas the Lord wants built into His church, it is His ideas He expressed in His Holy Bible. He did not institute denominational structures. For these are about perpetuating delineated viewpoints of certain men amongst other men. Paul told the Corinthians not to go beyond what was written and puff one man up against another. Why should we? Service is not for the servant, it is for the served.
-----So neither can I slight the people or the churches that abandon the denomination. The denomination should not even be. The fever exists clearly in a cancerous appendage to the church that is not a part of His body. It is much akin to the cancer that entered your church through those who spied it out in order to seize it and make it serve their own likings. It only mocks Him worse to call such selfish ambitions, “Visions from God.” It only makes His Holy Bride a laughing stock to assemble His people around such selfish ambitions and call the resulting consortium of churches “The This Church,” or “The That Church.” We shame Him by elevating our pettiness. It is given for each of us to love and to hold one another. To cherish one another and care for one another. It is given for each of us to spend our attention on the ones next to us, to know them, and to understand their needs as they understand them. It is given to us to meet those needs in as much as we can, or to help them find the meeting of those needs if we can not. Whether physical or spiritual, those needs held between us are the evidence of church. Not our doctrines, our titles, or our petty insistences upon how to evangelize. Maybe the feverish appendage should be abandoned to die, but maybe its remaining health needs prolonging for the sake of those still caught within it.
-----What to do about Presbyterian Counsel-USA becoming Politically Correct-USA? Do what the Lord leads you to do, and know that your brother is doing the same. Any difference between the two is not disunity, but only variation of duty.
Post a Comment