Congregational Autonomy

On the subject of congregational autonomy: The other night you mentioned congregations having female ministers. Hiring females to work with the girls of the congregation makes a lot of sense to me. Besides there is no biblical support for congregations hiring staff the way churches do today. Can we find the concept, in the Bible, of contracting with a man to speak to the congregation twice on Sunday, to teach one or two classes each week, publish a bulletin, visit the sick, speak at funerals, marry the members, all while being on call 24x7?

 

In the first century congregations were independent, in some sense, self-ruling.

 

Today the Church of Christ practices “church autonomy” as long as those other congregations do the same things the same way they do.

 

The real question is why do we care what other congregations do? Instead of being distracted by what others are doing we should concentrate on what we do.

 

The Church of Christ has experienced 60 years of uninvolved parents, unsupervised Youth Ministers, Youth Rallies with mixed messages, preachers riding roughshod over local leadership and unqualified and Bible-illiterate Elders.

 

We are confident we have the Sunday "worship" correct. We say we rely on commands, examples, and "necessary inferences" but it is curious how much we do without any of those.

 

The problem is that the "Traditional" is not working. Churches are fading away. We hear about the lack of young men wanting to "fill the pulpit." Has anyone considered these young men do not want to run a local congregation? Maybe they want to preach the Gospel to the unsaved. Research shows that within 2 hours no one remembers what the sermon was about.

 

The Gospel doesn't change but we must take it to people in ways different than they did during the Restoration Movement or even during New Testament times. The difficulty will be the traditional churches won't like it.

I believe I have addressed the three areas on which comments were made the other night with which I disagreed. I will now leave you alone. I realize what I think is not important but since I have to listen to people say things with which I disagree it is only fair to return the privilege. I also realize you may not be reading this but that is OK because once I detect that I disagree I do not pay that much attention. 

 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
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“Having spent considerable time with good people, I can understand why Jesus liked to be with tax collectors and reprobate sinners."

Mark Twain