By sifilings
Feb
07
2014
"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
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Jim wrote:
You got the Bible confused with a hindu world-view movie, brother.
www.churchsonefoundation.com
www.gracecurchministry.org
Ted, the population of the
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.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Um no Rob, Ted is referring
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
Hmm,
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.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Biblical literacy
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?
www.churchsonefoundation.com
www.gracecurchministry.org
Please help me understand your question
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.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Stop Beating Around the Bush
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:
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
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
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.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Metropolitan cf. Community
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.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
RE: Biblical Illiteracy
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,
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?
In cities that large
how does a believer have a sense of fellowship and particapatory ministry in a single mega church.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Ted, I have a simple question,
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..
elect won't be missed
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.
I am not arguing the matter
I am not arguing the matter of evangelizing the lost. I'm trying to find out how the post salvation matters of discipleship and fellowship are handled.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
There'sMore to Church Than Evangelism
though evangelism is part of a church's foundational purpose. Without a heart for evangelism, a church is merely a social club. But, there is also the matter what do you do with folks once they've been saved.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
agreed
Rob,
I could not agree more. Let me say that I was not speaking in support of Ted's position, just trying to further the discussion since he hasn't responded. The church's ministry of discipleship is something that I feel very strongly about, and it cannot be done by proxy. There simply is no substitute for intimate fellowship and the breaking of bread.
Ted, Fish or
cut bait. Either address my concerns (discipleship and fellowship) or clearly withdraw from the discussion.
Pvawte, I thank you for clueing me in.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Ted
it's been two+ days since my last post. Since you haven't posted an answer to my question or even acknowledged it, I assume you are without an answer and have withdrawn from this discussion.
Sorry, to my fellow members for sounding a bit harsh. But, I take umbrage at being non-sequiturly called "Biblically illiterate."
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Rob
No need to apologize. I have been faithfully checking back on this post ever since Ted's oblique references to your biblical illiteracy. I am astonished, and disappointed, that he did not see fit to (1) clearly state his position instead of beating around the bush, and further, to (2) actually defend his position when it was unveiled.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Rob Fall wrote:
Rob - I'm still waiting for you to engage with Scripture.
www.churchsonefoundation.com
www.gracecurchministry.org
argument ad ignorantum
I'm joining late, but it looks to me like things got off track (further?) with that post. Ted, what you've done here is assume what you need to prove then challenge those who question it to disprove it--as though failure to disprove = proof. The "I'm right until you prove me wrong" line of reasoning is classic argumentum ad ignorantum. It only sounds even slightly convincing to people who have already decided.
The fundamental question is, where does the Bible teach that there may only be one church per some geographical or social unit? We can point out lack of NT evidence of multiple churches in a "city" all day and it cannot add up to a prohibition. Where is the biblical evidence that multiple churches per some arbitrary geographical boundary is not good?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Ted
Your comment . . .
. . . is at the kindergarten level. Please state your belief and briefly defend it, or let us know that you do not want to engage. You brought the topic up.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Aaron Blumer wrote:
Hi Aaron, trust you are comforted in the steadfast love of the Lord Jesus,
re: what you say above - you may be right. If so, I apologize.
But from my pov, if I've assumed anything here, it's that the Bible does teach us how many churches each locale ought to have. Apart from this thread, that one issue is rather important.
My own recollection is that prior to Rob writing "schism is the least of our worries" I had given him a link to an article on church planting and schism. His response was a semi-polite way of letting me know schism was irrelevant to the really critical things, like his region being "church poor" and "biblical illiterate."
Given that response I asked Rob to reconsider with two things - that 1 Cor. chapters 1-4 are all about dealing with the sin of schism. The implication (rightly or wrongly) was that schism does very much apply to where he lives. Second, I asked him to assess the Bible's own teachings on how many churches he believes are needed where he lives. With that, I claimed the Bible teaches a definite number and asked if he knew it.
Rob returned his own assessment of how many (12, I think), but did not respond to my question of him on the Bible's own number, nor did he comment on 1 Cor. 1-4 being related to schism. Instead, his answer was pragmatic - it reflected the kind of solid business thinking that helps Midas dealerships and IHOP restaurants figure out how many businesses to start in a given locale. But is that the way to think about churches? So I re-challenged him several days ago.
This morning I made it back over and found no interaction with Scripture yet. So I let him know I'm still waiting for his interaction with Scripture at some level. I don't think I've intoned, "I'm right until you prove me wrong," unless someone wants to say, "the Bible does not contain the information on how many churches each locale should have." Then as far as I'm concerned, game on.
Chip's own post above is more promising - with some suggested population counts of the ancient cities. Chip, brother, if you have time, check this out even if only for Justin Marty'rs quote early on in the article. While those population counts are up for debate (esp. Ephesus and Pergamum) - they are important because the high populations will prove more forcefully the biblical case for the local body of Christ.
aaron, as for your own question, "where does the Bible teach that there may only be one church per some geographical or social unit?," here's a trail of one city's references to follow:
Corinth: Acts 18:10, 1 Cor. 1:2, 1:10, 3:6-8, 10:16-17, 11:18-20, 14:23, Romans 16:23.
Then also, kindly allow me to point you to a few articles:
An article on when the glorified Christ speaks to churches, He only speaks to the one local church in every locale.
An article on how obedience to Jesus Christ demands that His local body meet in a single church in every locale.
An article on why planting churches where the body of Christ already exists is planting schism.
An article on the Bible's own hermeneutic by which God convinces us what to believe and do as individuals and churches.
I'll be happy to discuss those articles at my web site, but I'm happy to discuss the Scripture trail on Corinth here when i can make it over.
In the Lord Jesus,
www.churchsonefoundation.com
www.gracecurchministry.org
No Scriptureal argument
because at this point it's not relevant. First, please define "locale." Second, I hold to a local church only interpretation of ecclesia. So, trying to debunk the universal church to me is a waste of words.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Ted
Ted,
Or
I think I would argue that the reiteration / command to raise up elders in the NT church is actually foreshadowed in the OT - in Deuteronomy, to be exact. So if Moses had to divest himself of leadership responsibilities to ensure that the civil society of Israel functioned, even down to groups of fifties and tens (v. 15), then I'm not sure why you seem to think that we only need one set of elders per city for our religious institutions. Can you expand a little more? I'm not buying into what you're saying here.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
Thanks Jay
let me add San Francisco has multiple primary languages spoken. At the moment, there are Spanish, English, Russian, Chinese, and Tagalog congregations.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
I honestly don't know how you
I honestly don't know how you can begin to take Ted's position seriously. It might sound good but there are numerous problems starting with the simple fact that the Bible does not command it. I know he thinks it does but he is in the tiny minority.
What is a locality? The fact is that is an arbitrary thing. The only way to settle that is to have a modern-day apostle level person to define localities and rule over churches. Imagine the problems related to that little sticky issue. I am sure Ted would be willing to volunteer for that position. He might appoint himself as he admits he appointed himself at the church he is at but I don't see it working out so well.
I think the proof in the pudding is whether Ted is following his own teaching? He is in a city with lots of other churches. I am sure his church was not the first one either. Why is that? What is he doing to merge his church with others?
Yeup
That's my basic question.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
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