Elders Rule! But Congregations Decide

“They understand ‘ruling’ to mean that elders make decisions for the congregation, and they understand ‘obeying’ to mean that the congregation knuckles under to those elder-made decisions. The question is whether this construal really does justice to the evidence.”
Elders Rule! But Congregations Decide

Discussion

Ted, the population of the City and County of San Francisco is 825,111. The communities and cities between San Francisco’s southern boundary and San Francisco International Airport (Daly City, Colma, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Brisbane, Broadmoor and Pacifica) total 213,016. This totals 1,038,127 divided up among various and sundry ethnic, linguistic, and geographic communities.

FYI, by “Biblical illiteracy” I mean folks who have no idea or conception of basic Biblical usages. To put it simply, they don’t know either Genesis or Revelation even exist.

[Ted Bigelow]

my immediate region could use at least 12 more good churches

OK. Now support that from Scripture (not to keep you going, but to make a point about biblical illiteracy).

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

Um no Rob, Ted is referring to you as the illiterate because you don’t know about his theory that there is supposed to be only one church per city. But he will call you “brother” while he calls you illiterate ;)

I kind of thought that’s where he was going. But with 1,038,127 (2010 census), if I divvied up the are by population at say 1 per 10,000, that’s 104 churches. If I divvied it up geographically, the 117 neighborhoods of San Francisco would support around 17 churches. For ethnic and linguistic reasons, you could add at least 6-7 churches. Then there is the Northern Peninsula, again thinking of the geography, you could add another 10 churches.

Unless of course he is positing one church for a million and change.

[GregH]

Um no Rob, Ted is referring to you as the illiterate because you don’t know about his theory that there is supposed to be only one church per city. But he will call you “brother” while he calls you illiterate ;)

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

I kind of thought that’s where he was going. But with 1,038,127 (2010 census), if I divvied up the are by population at say 1 per 10,000, that’s 104 churches

No disrespect intended, but when asked to justify with the Bible your reasons for more 12 churches where you live, you gave a pragmatic answer bereft of biblical teaching. Care to try again?

Are you positing one church for the area? I sliced the area up so each community would have one church. I don’t believe in multi-campus churches. Metro San Francisco’s political boundaries encompass multiple communities.

[Ted Bigelow]

I kind of thought that’s where he was going. But with 1,038,127 (2010 census), if I divvied up the are by population at say 1 per 10,000, that’s 104 churches

No disrespect intended, but when asked to justify with the Bible your reasons for more 12 churches where you live, you gave a pragmatic answer bereft of biblical teaching. Care to try again?

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

Ted:

Not sure why you’re being so coy about an issue you obviously feel passionate about. You purposely brought the issue up, and you’re leading the readers into a ridiculous game of hide and seek. For the sake of sanity, this is from Ted’s blog:

How far astray is modern Christianity? It applauds schism and mocks the idea of a single church in a single locale. Sadly, when Christians are schismed they either compete and argue with each other, or ignore each other, all the while breaking the command, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” ().

Only when all the saints in a region worship together every Sunday in the same church can they “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, and be filled up to all the fullness of God” (). Only Paul’s reformation on Crete, made real where we each live, has the power to bring us that comprehension.

So, Rob, I would say that Ted does indeed propose a single church for each city. Perhaps Ted himself could elaborate and stop paying hard to get?

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

Ah the irony of accusing Rob of pragmatism. Ted has to figure out what constitutes a city does he not? That is not an easy thing to do when you figure in suburbia and such. I would love to see how he does that in an non-pragmatic way.

Living in an area that’s been cosmopolitan and metropolitan since 1848, I tend to ignore actual city and county lines in deciding what is a community.

[GregH]

Ah the irony of accusing Rob of pragmatism. Ted has to figure out what constitutes a city does he not? That is not an easy thing to do when you figure in suburbia and such. I would love to see how he does that in an non-pragmatic way.

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

What you quoted works when dealing with a community. However, for a million plus, that means a single church that dwarfs any of the mega churches we know of today. From my perspective, most churches are best at around 350 to 500. Some are of course smaller, HSBC’s membership stands at 183 as of January 1. Our Sunday AM service runs around 200. That’s not to say there isn’t room for larger congregations. There is. But I think mega churches are at best an anomaly not the rule.

[TylerR]

Ted:

Not sure why you’re being so coy about an issue you obviously feel passionate about. You purposely brought the issue up, and you’re leading the readers into a ridiculous game of hide and seek. For the sake of sanity, this is from Ted’s blog:

How far astray is modern Christianity? It applauds schism and mocks the idea of a single church in a single locale. Sadly, when Christians are schismed they either compete and argue with each other, or ignore each other, all the while breaking the command, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” ().

Only when all the saints in a region worship together every Sunday in the same church can they “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, and be filled up to all the fullness of God” (). Only Paul’s reformation on Crete, made real where we each live, has the power to bring us that comprehension.

So, Rob, I would say that Ted does indeed propose a single church for each city. Perhaps Ted himself could elaborate and stop paying hard to get?

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

I guess he hasn’t met some of the American pagans we have here in SFO. And I don’t mean the Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Animists, et al. in the various Asian communities. Then there is the heavy RCC influence with a touch of Mormonism.

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

While its a warm, fuzzy idea, I don’t think you can prove that cities in biblical times even held to a single church rule. MIght have, and probably did at first, but not necessarily. And, probably added churches over time for purley pragmatic reasons like travel distance. Some of the Roman cities were quite large, and, without cars or even animals to ride, travel would have been prohibitive at some point for regular meetings and daily participation in the life of the body. While it’s true that Roman cities were likely more compact than the average U. S. city because of cramped, multistory housing, here are few examples of cities where I still would not want to travel by foot to a single church:

Rome-1,000,000
Alexandria-500,000
Antioch-400,000
Carthage-300,000
Pergamum-300,000
Ephesus-200,000
Athens-100,000
Jerusalem-100,000
Miletus-100,000
Smyrna-80,000

Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?

how does a believer have a sense of fellowship and particapatory ministry in a single mega church.

[Chip Van Emmerik]

While its a warm, fuzzy idea, I don’t think you can prove that cities in biblical times even held to a single church rule. MIght have, and probably did at first, but not necessarily. And, probably added churches over time for purley pragmatic reasons like travel distance. Some of the Roman cities were quite large, and, without cars or even animals to ride, travel would have been prohibitive at some point for regular meetings and daily participation in the life of the body. While it’s true that Roman cities were likely more compact than the average U. S. city because of cramped, multistory housing, here are few examples of cities where I still would not want to travel by foot to a single church:

Rome-1,000,000
Alexandria-500,000
Antioch-400,000
Carthage-300,000
Pergamum-300,000
Ephesus-200,000
Athens-100,000
Jerusalem-100,000
Miletus-100,000
Smyrna-80,000

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

accepting your position of one church per city\town\village, How do you propose to minister to a city like San Francisco with over 300K in population?

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

Rob,

I of course can’t answer for Ted, but according to the article he linked to (which I admittedly didn’t make it through completely), God’s elect in any city cannot fail to be saved whether by many or by few. In a city such as SF, all those whom the Lord has in the city (see Acts 18:10) must come to saving knowledge of Christ, therefore the practical issues of how that will happen are irrelevant. At least that is how I understood Ted’s position on that subject.