Posts of Librarian RSSMon, 27 Dec 2021 03:09:25 GMTThe Gospel and the Holy Spirit is the possession of every member of the Church, thus the NT grants a certain qualified access for every member to the Church’s authority structure.  This is evident in the following ways:1).  Every member has the “ministry” of reconciliation, 2 Cor 5:18.  The Great Commission is the responsibility of every member of the Church.2).  “Ministry” belongs to every member, not leadership, Eph 4:11–12.  Leaders prepare the saints for the “ministry.”3).  The church was responsible for the selection of its leaders in Acts 6:6; 14:23 (see side bar #2). The standards to which leaders must attain are tested by every member of the church, 1 Tim 3:1–7.; Titus 1:6–9.  Even in the selection of the replacement for Judas, the nomination of the two candidates came from the gathered group of believers (Acts 1:15, 23).4).  Church discipline ultimately rests in the hands of every member of the church, Matt 18:15–17.  Pastors and elders may lead in such matters, but the final word in discipline was given to the church. We also note the prominence of “you” (pl.) as in “you all” in the instructions Paul gives about a case of discipline in 1 Cor 5:2, 7, 12, and 13.5).  Every member is responsible for the church’s order and doctrine.  “Examine everything carefully” (1 Thess 5:21) was not addressed to just the leaders in Thessalonica, but to the whole body.  So also the command to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) was given to the entire church, not just the leaders.  A negative expression of this is the churches of the last days that will “accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires” (2 Tim 4:3).  The church’s teachers are accumulated by the church, not appointed by someone from outside the church.6).  Every member has a ministry of oversight, literally “bishopping,” (Gk, episkopountes) in the church, Heb 12:15.7).  Every member is called to some aspect of te... Read more

]]>Mon, 27 Dec 2021 03:09:25 GMTAnd this all Christians ought to know: That the title of clergy St. Peter gave to all God's people, till Pope Higinus and the succeeding prelates took it from them, appropriating that name to themselves and their priests only; and condemning the rest of God's inheritance to an injurious and alienate condition of laity, they separated from them by local partitions in churches, through their gross ignorance and pride imitating the old temple, and excluded the members of Christ...For we have learned that the scornful term of laic, the consecrating of temples, carpets, and tablecloths, the railing in of a repugnant and contradictive mount Sinai in the gospel, as if the touch of a lay Christian, who is nevertheless God's living temple, could profane dead Judaisms, the exclusion of Christ's people from the offices of holy discipline through the pride of a usurping clergy causes the rest to have an unworthy and abject opinion of themselves, to approach to holy duties with a slavish fear and to unholy doings with a familiar boldness. For seeing such a wide and terrible distance between religious things and themselves, and that in respect of a wooden table and the perimeter of holy ground about it, a flagon pot and a linen corporal, the priest esteems their layships unhallowed and unclean, they fear religion with such a fear as loves not, and think the purity of the gospel too pure for them, and that any uncleanness is more suitable to their unconsecrated estate. But when every good Christian, thoroughly acquainted with all those glorious privileges of sanctification and adoption which render him more sacred than any dedicated altar or element, shall be restored to his right in the church, and not excluded from such place of spiritual governments his Christian abilities and his approved good life in the eye and testimony of the church shall prefer him to, this and nothing sooner will open his eyes to a wise and true valuation of himself, which is so requisite and high a... Read more

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