The Unaffiliated Baptist Church

…is whether the relationships among the churches described in Acts and the Epistles constituted an affiliation among the early churches. I would argue that there clearly was, and the question then is whether it was merely an affiliation based in the apostles, or whether God wanted us to continue those affiliations after the Apostles had died. So I would argue that there is a historical and Biblical question that we ought to answer in this regard in addition to the practical reason Brandenburg hints at; that there is a need to restrain the “big men” from their excesses. Obviously we see this in all forms of church government, so we would conclude that it is hard to get some to see something bigger than themselves.

Really, that’s the entire reason that John write his third epistle, no?