February 07, 2007
Pledge of Cooperation
In my experience the Spirit inspires and motivates believers to serve with their time, spiritual gifts, finances and energies. However, the authorities at my church state that one of the responsibilities of members is a ‘pledge of cooperation by serving’ in those areas. Personally, I believe taking a pledge is serious business. To me it’s a promise, an agreement and an obligation. In 1 Timothy 5:12, Paul gives a caution concerning pledges. He states that the list of widows should not include names of younger women because “they bring judgment upon themselves” by breaking their pledge if they decided to remarry. We deceive ourselves if we think we can manipulate a pledge if, or when, we don’t want to fulfill it. Will members revisit this ‘pledge of cooperation’ in six months and find they are faithful…or will they have forgotten their pledge?
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Gail;
-----Today’s Christians do not take time to stop and realize how much two thousand years are. Figuring forty year generations, they are fifty generations. That is fifty times a father taught a son about the Scripture and the Church. Of course, the father teaches according to what he has learned to be relevant. Most of that he learned from his father. That gets augmented by his own experiences and reflections, then it is taught to the son. Over and over for fifty times.
-----I have been all too aware of this process since I first became seriously interested in knowing the Bible when I was in high school. Therefore, I have always been wary of the possibility that what I was hearing from the preachers, church leaders, and the influential brethren of the body might be more tradition than Scripture. Consequently, sorting between the Scriptural concept and the traditional one has been a continuous theme in all of my studies and ponderings.
-----I am left amazed at how much tradition these contemporary brethren want to grasp tightly. They have been anxious to trash all of the traditional sounds and sights of the church. Yet they desire to retain all of the traditional error regarding the being of the church as an organization, the authorities of a few to control its nature and objectives, and the attitudes and perspectives of those who gather in it.
-----The Bible does not contradict itself. On the one hand, it presents the authority of the elders in Heb 13:17 and I Tim. 5:17. But on the other hand it presents the individual life, free in its relationship with Christ to do, serve, and respond to Him according to personal understanding (Rom 12, 14, I Cor 12, 14, Col 2, I Pet 5:1-3). These two concepts must harmonize, because they are both Scriptural. That harmony is found in limits upon the authority of the elders and the freedoms of the individual. Those limits are defined by addressing the identity of the other and the needs of the other. When the pervasiveness of that concept is fully realized, it comes to mind just how thoroughly agreement with one another, attention to one another, and pleasing one another comprise the fiber of the church character. Without these concepts, love is meaningless.
-----I am sure this is the idea the leaders at XXC have in mind by “pledge of cooperation.” But it is frightening for me to see how much club mentality has been poured into the remaking of the character of XXC. From membership renewal to pledges of cooperation, from submission to definitions as determined by elders to focusing efforts upon service as proposed by elders, XXC smacks of a club operation. And is there verification of such charge? The elders are given the responsibility of tending a flock. If that were the responsibility they received they would not have driven off most of that flock over the last several years in order to have church by their standards. That is definitely club mentality!
-----What I see in the Scriptures (no thank you to the traditions of men), church is not the goal. Church is not the organization. The style, sound, or personality of the church is not the affairs of the church. The members of the body are the goal. What they are, who they are, and all of their mistakes and all of their spiritual skills are the gathering. What they need, their physical provision of food and shelter, and their spiritual provision of respect, honor, goodness, kindness, mercy, peacefulness, etc., etc., etc., etc. are the affairs of the church. Jesus Christ has accepted them as they are without turning them away to some other gathering “down the road you will like better,” and those who actually are leaders of what the Scriptures define as the church would not either (Rom 15:7). Scriptural church is simple, because it is not the point. Every person who is the Lord’s is the point. But a club will sort between those who are worthy to be in that club and those who are not by such subtleties as narrow life-style characterizations, how much they will give to the club rather than need from it, their willingness to pledge co-operation with club objectives, and submission to directives determined by club leaders. Clubs are complex, just look at XXC for example.
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