Just thought I’d mention that I will be doing the Bible Study tonight at Stand Up Ministries. The study starts at 8 pm. I should have notes here shortly. Standup will also send them out to folks on their mailing list.
Make sure you have downloaded PalTalk and are all set up. This is your chance to tell me in person that I’m going to hell for touching God’s anointed Mend of Gawd.
If you don’t already have Paltalk, click on the Download button on the right side of the web page and follow the instructions. You must be able to play sound to hear the presentation.
10:25 am Local
The Outline/Notes for this PM.
The Pimps and Our Responsibility
1. The Overview
a. What’s out there
b. What the pimps do to the people
c. The responsibility of the pastors/elders
d. The responsibility of the believers
2. What’s out there
a. The truth (accurate and balanced presentation of the Gospel)
b. Straight up false teaching (cults, false religions, etc)
c. Truth with big dose of error (prosperity preaching, social gospel, wealthy apostles, bless to be blessed, ten-fold increase, faith as a substance, etc)
d. False teaching with the intent to fleece the sheeple
3. What the pimps do to the sheeple – Why not let God take care of it?
a. Shipwreck faith
b. Deceive the sheeple
c. Take advantage of people
d. Keep the sheeple poor –spiritually and financially
4. The responsibility of the pastors/elders
a. To encourage
b. To protect
c. To teach the truth
d. To discipline
5. The responsibility of the believer/layman
a. To study
b. To hide the Word in our hearts
c. To put the Word first – always
d. To be on the watch and to be alert
6. The Results of meeting our responsibilities
a. Maturing Christians
b. An effective witness to the community
c. The ability to share the Gospel
d. The ability to help those around us
e. The ability to stand up under persecution
Hope it went well Melvin. God bless you for your faithfulness in establishing truth to the family of the faithful! PJ
(MN: It seemed to have gone well. There was a glitch with my computer (remember, they are spawns from Hell, here to make my life miserable.) Feedback indicated that people seemed to get a little something out of it. I think folks need to get used to the format to make it go really well. )
Melvin, i wonder if you could conclude the teaching the next time you are up to bat. From what i can remember you go knocked off right when you were at Romans 2:17-24, which I think was getting to the matter of hypocricy and proving to be a good example to those in the world.
(MN: Should I mention the “Bring Melvin Back” Ministry at the Melvinite Temple of Fantastic and Wonderful Happenings? Love offerings in multiples of $50 are accepted. And of course, you know the drill. [imagine me holding the microphone to my mouth] In God we trust. All others pay [now I’m holding the microphone out to the audience] pay by certified check or credit card. )
ok Mel i can roll with that, under one condition…. That you promise to use the “seed” offering for a good mic and not on that Jet.
Righter says the check is in the mail
Blessed Be The Passover Lamb,
O.K. now Sen. Grassely is getting backed by the Democratic Chairman of The Senate Finance committee.
Now there are two…..
Read full article:
http://www.kcci.com/news/15574524/detail.html?rss=des&psp=news
May His Kingdom Come,
Avishalom
(MN: Wordy Blowhard didn’t give a name. I decided to give him one and decided on WB. WB gets this posting for free. If any of you wish to respond, you are certainly free and welcomed to do so. However, I’m not expecting a particularly stimulating conversation from WB. This appears to be a good case of someone walking in with the assumption that Judeao-Christian doctrine is simply a repeat of much of the mystery religions, myths, etc that are out there.
I read lots of animosity, but very little in the way of thoughtful objections. )
There are two things which I have come to look upon as constituting the unpardonable sin of the father and mother against the helpless innocence of infancy. The one is in allowing their little children to run the risk of blood-poisoning–such as was once suffered by a child of mine–from the filthy fraud of vaccination. The other is in permitting the mind and soul of their children to be inoculated with the still more fatal virus of the old, false, orthodox dogmas and delusions, by allowing them to believe that the fables of ancient mythology are the sacred and solely true “Word of God,” if they are found in the Hebrew Scriptures–the one book of the religiously ignorant. Generation after generation we learn, unlearn, and relearn the same lying, legendary lore, and it takes the latter half of all one’s lifetime to throw off the mass of corrupting error instilled into us during the earlier half, even when we do break out and slough it off in a mental eruption, and have to find ourselves in utter rebellion against things as they are. Unfortunately, the mass of people never do get rid of this infection, nor of the desire to give their disease to others.
The fact of the matter is, the Christian dogmas and doctrines began as such with being unintelligible and inexplicable; they were to remain as mysteries; and any true explanation of them is death to their false pretentions. It is my method to explode by explaining them. Take the doctrine of the Trinity for example. Can any theologian throughout all Christendom to-day give us any intelligible account of its origin and primary meaning? Not one. For that we must go to mythology, which was earlier than our theology, and which alone enables us to explain its primitive mysteries. The natural genesis of the Trinity was found, and is to be refound, in lunar phenomena. The moon, in mythology and chronology, was a time-measurer of a three-fold nature. At fifteen days of age, or full-moon, it was the mother-moon. Hence Ishtar, in Akkad, is designated Goddess 15. The lessening, waning moon was her little one, the child of the moon, who became the virile one, the adult, as the horned new moon, the reproducer who was fabled to rebeget himself on the mother moon, and thus become his own father, as a natural mode of describing natural phenomena.
These three are eternally one in external nature–a Trinity always manifesting monthly, and the triple aspect was humanly, or naturally, expressed by means of the mother, child, and reproducing male, which three are also one in the total human being. In the Christian Iconography, you will sometimes see the Virgin Mary enthroned in the new moon, with the child in her arms, and these two, with the horned or phallic moon, constitute the Christian Trinity in Unity. Such was the primitive mode of thinking in things, afterwards continued in a mystical or doctrinal phase. Such, I affirm to be the origin of the Trinity in mythology, which preceded religion; and when this is applied abstractly, to the nature of deity, or to mind in nature, by means of metaphysic, the result is an imposition, and he or she who practices imposition, consciously or not, is an impostor. No such thing can be known as a triune or triangular God; but we are able to show how such types originated. When our words are examined, we shall frequently find that our metaphysic has been abstracted, or falsely filched from primitive physics, as was the Trinity by Plato, which was continued by the Christian Fathers, who tell us that but for Plato they would never have understood the doctrine of the Trinity. As with the Trinity, so it is with the origin of the theological Devil. The crucial question of the savage man, Friday, was too fundamental for the theology of Robinson Crusoe. Friday asks, “But, if God much strong, much mighty as the devil, why God no kill the devil, and so make him no more wicked?” Crusoe, imitating other theologists, not knowing what to say, “pretended not to hear him.” (I am told this passage has been omitted from certain recent editions.) To give an answer to that question we shall have to go round to work. It would never do to begin a lecture on this subject like the well-known chapter headed “Snakes in Iceland,” which consisted of the statement, “there are no snakes in Iceland!” If I did, my lecture might be summed up in the words, “there is no devil.” But every belief, superstition, and mental type, had its natural genesis once, the devil included.
The result of 14 years’ research in the Records of the Past is a personal conviction that the human mind has long suffered an eclipse, and been darkened and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas, the real meaning of which has been lost to the moderns! Myths and allegories, whose significance was once unfolded to the initiates in the ancient mysteries, have been adopted in ignorance, and re-issued as real truths divinely vouchsafed to mankind for the first and only time when found in the Hebrew writings! The earlier religions had their myths interpreted by means of the oral and unwritten Wisdom. We have ours misinterpreted; and a great deal of what has been imposed upon us as God’s direct, true, and sole revelation to man, is a mass of inverted myths, under the shadow of which men have been cowering as timorously as birds in the stubble, when a kite in the shape of a hawk is held hovering overhead to keep them down; as I have seen it practised in England!
Interesting comment.
Now what did it say? Thats 5 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.
Whew, I’m glad I didn’t read it.
Thanks for the summary and warning Cop. I’m short on minutes today as it is
.
That is one of the best comments I’ve ever, ever read here, Melvin — and by an anti-vaccination Gnostic, no less! Thanks for letting it through; I got a good chuckle and I offer this dude a big round of applause for the great spellbinder phraseology: “we learn, unlearn, and relearn the same lying, legendary lore, and it takes the latter half of all one’s lifetime to throw off the mass of corrupting error” — priceless. Check out that alliteration!
Eckhart Tolle is that you?
Uh, yeah man, sho’ you right when you know you’re wrong?
say whaaaaaaaat?
Uuuh OoooKaaay….?
I was gonna ask how it relates but I guess since it falls under the “Bible Study” posting it fits as an alternative view maybe?
May His Kingdom Come!
Avishalom
Good grief Wordy……..how did you stuff so much theological, historical, and logical fallacy into that overlong stream-of-unconsciousness babbling??
Quality stuff. Let me guess,you write tax code for the Federal Government??
Wow…. that was so deep that when I woke up I couldn’t fathom if I ever was asleep….. or had I entered the twilight zone…….
Somebody help me out. What did he just say?
I’m virtually certain Wordy B. said we’re supposed to blame our parents for everything. See? It’s right there in the first sentence…
(He could have stopped there)
Or, I’m almost pretty sure that’s what it means, sort of, but them, I’m virtually certain I’m not nearly as edjumucated as Wordy.
Melvin, stop making me laugh so hard
Righter is confused…
I came across a youtube clip entitled “America’s Next Top Pastor” on the Way of The Master website. It was kinda relevant to the Bible study topic and funnnny! So I thought I would share it with you all.
Melvin,
Have you considered the reason that many are bamboozled by false teachers, including myself, is that we are not taught to think? I was listening to something last night about kids in Zimbabwe who were sitting in a circle analyzing and arguing about a Jonathan Edwards sermon. Again I was listening to Way of The Master radio clip. Then I listened to something from Paul Washer and he was speaking at a college conference. He discussed how he has been in contact with children from homeschooling families who can sit and discuss issues that he had no clue about until he finished seminary. He said a 4yr old was asking him questions that just amazed him.
Perhaps in this country we sell our kids short. It almost seems that there is an ochestrated plan to dumb down everyone. And perhaps there is because Satan is the god of this world and the prince and power of the air.
But God is faithful. He is raising up a godly remnant in homeschooling families and overseas that have not been tainted by this wordly system.
I hope I did not go too off subject but it just all came to me this a.m. and I wanted someone’s input. Thanks for hearing me out.
Well, I’m not going to home school my kids, because I don’t have the patience, neither do I trust my wife all that much in the homeschooling department.
I do know one thing, and that is my kids are going to college, regardless of what type of schooling they had. However, if my children become uppity and tell me that they don’t want to see no parts of a college, then I will make sure that they go without food and water, as long as they live under my roof, until they recant…
One doesn’t have to be home schooled, however, in order to learn sound theology/think critically. The same has happened numerous times in the public school sector and Christian Schools also where the Kids haven’t been ” tainted by this wordly system.”……The Remnant’s there too, but personally I think what made the difference in those home schooled children is the FAMILY UNIT reinforcing a Biblical World view first.
(MN: Exactly right on the last part. It is first and primarily the parents’ responsibility to teach the children sound doctrine. Or course, the requires that the parents be encouraged to get sound doctrine in the first place. In most of the churches out there this isn’t going to happen. )
College isn’t necessarily the BEST thing for every child, though. There are also plenty of others who haven’t gone and have done MANY GREAT things for the Lord…..things such as ministry, mission field, or are working decent jobs/making their own buisnesses.
It often seems as if we’ve made the thing into an IDOL and acted like one cannot glorify the Lord effectively without it.
Melanie,
You can talk to me about this until your heart’s content…My wife and I have been discussing this very thing, and you’ve hit on something that is very near and dear to my heart…I tell her all of the time that if our schedules were not the way they were, I would pull all 3 of our blessings out of public school and we would homeschool in a heartbeat…Although I had not heard of the spectacular stories you mention, I’ve done some good research on homeschooling and it appears to be superior to public schooling in every way…I agree with your synopsis of how our children are being dumbed down in today’s society…many factors play a role in this. Things like video games, the internet, overemphasis on style rather than substance and big time peer pressure from other children just to name a few. I can remember a time when it was really fun to go to the public library. Now it seems like a ghost town unless kids have some type of project to do and it is absolutely NECESSARY that they step foot in there. I’m babbling…If you want to talk more about it, have Mel give you my email address, or we can talk about it on Angela’s site, since to my knowledge she is a homeschooler as well…Just let me know…
Soli Deo Gloria,
R4C
hi r4c & melanie,
i’d be happy to share about homeschooling and answer any qs, you may have.
R4c, Thanks for your response but I do not have any children. I am single. Nevertheless these issues concern me because these little darlings will grow up one day…and what a day it will be if they do not have a biblical worldview. I just wonder what kind of people will they be as a result of growing up in a society with books like “My Two Mommies”. I spoke to a woman who teaches sex education in the public schools. Actually, she focuses on celibacy. She told me that one of the little girls thought she was joking when she taught them that they did not have to have sex.
I don’t know what God has in store for me but if He so blesses I really would like to homeschool my children. Even if I don’t homeschool, I think what Gxg said makes sense–”the FAMILY UNIT reinforcing a Biblical World view first.” Also even if I never get married and have children, I just simply support my brothers and sisters who take the time to teach their own children.
I’ll check out Angela’s site. Is that Mrs. Mav? Or should I say, mrs. mav?
Personally, the entire battle over which system of education—whether homeschooling, public schooling, or Christian Schooling—is the most superior could go on 4 ages. Went to a Christian Highschool myself as well as Public Middle School…….& neither was 100% fullproof even with Godly Families. The same goes for HomeSchool, as I’ve seen my fair share of heathens coming out of that group too
All have their good and their bad points, and ultimately it comes down to a case-by-case basis & seeing what the Lord’s Will is for that individual.
Righter thinks that it is time for Seekerman to back away from the screen, slowly…
Mr. Melvin or anyone, im in the Springfield, Va area , im looking for a good church to attend biblestudy or fellowship with , any suggestions, even in this whole area.
I, of course, am going to suggest Hillcrest Baptist. It’s up 95 toward Temple Hill. 2300 Iverson Road, Temple Hill, MD. Just do a Google search and it’ll show up. You can get the phone number from there.
A warning though: The pastor is mad serious about studying the Bible, understanding the Bible, and applying the Bible to your life in excruciating detail. He is even…uh…dragging the church toward an Elders structure versus the current Deacon/Pastor structure.
Any others? Please provide a web site address and a little information about the church if you do.
Brother Dominic,
Consider checking this one out, as They have locations in Blacksburg (Shenadoah Valley) and Richmond.
http://homefellowship.home.comcast.net/~homefellowship/
The main organization it’s connected with can be found here:
http://www.ntrf.org/about-us/index.php
For researh articles/information on their stances:
http://www.ntrf.org/articles/index.php
Don’t know if that’s anywhere close to where you live……
The organization itself is akin to what would be known as “home fellowships” , & They hold to believer’s baptism and the Doctrines of Grace, with their gathering designed to be family-integrated (family stays together and learns together). Worship consists of psalms, hymns, prayer, music education, etc.
They feel strongly Scripture advocates such things as living room sized churches in homes, the Lord’s Supper as a full meal, church leaders as servants (rather than lords/CEO), church government by consensus, the right and responsibility of the brothers to make decisions corporately, no clergy-laity distinction, and interactive (participatory) church meetings where EVERYONE can participate instead of observing.
While they’re firmly convinced that God’s best is for all His people to organize their churches according to New Testament patterns, they’re not “against” everyone else (i.e. institutional/traditional churches with buildings, one-man pastor/deacon systems, ETC…Romans 14:4).etc).
Personally, I’m sold out on the way they model things as it seems to be the most biblically consistent……& if you’d like more resources/info, feel free to email me:
Ggreaves103@comcast.net
thank you brother so much, i think its kinda of similar to The church at Atlanta i visited before
Thanks Mr. melvin
Melvin said:
“A warning though: The pastor is mad serious about studying the Bible, understanding the Bible, and applying the Bible to your life in excruciating detail. He is even…uh…dragging the church toward an Elders structure versus the current Deacon/Pastor structure.”
My question:
What is an “Elders structure”?
(MN: As opposed to having a Deacon Board, a Board of Trustees, and the pastor. Instead we are moving toward Elders (with an eye toward the men appointed meeting the qualifications laid out by the Bible in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, and as discussed in Acts and other places. The pastor is one of several elders. They are there to teach, preach, and discipline. The deacons are there to meet the physical needs of the congregation and the facility.
The structure does not assume that deacon and elder are interchangeable. Each has a specific function and a specific set of responsibilities.
By the way, I really appreciate you asking that question rather than sitting back quietly. That’s the attitude that is so important in avoiding getting pimped by the wolves that are out there. )
Brother Melvin,
If I may ask, You said “He is even…uh…dragging the church toward an Elders structure versus the current Deacon/Pastor structure.” That said, I’d be interested in knowing why there’s so much resistance there…..unless I misread what you were meaning by the word “drag”.
(MN: People get comfortable doing things a certain way. And often the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is presented as a reason to avoid change. But the difficulty here is that if it’s not in accordance with our best understanding of Scripture, it IS broke and DOES need to be fixed. Our local church has been governed under Pastor/Deacon for its entire existence (fifty2 years). Change is both difficult and often scary. “Drag” implies exactly what you caught. )
This is the way my church is structured. I was raised in the black church with the deacon board and usher board and whatever board there was. It is a multiracial church from all different backgrounds. Former gang members,prostitutes, sinners all of us saved by His amazing Grace!
(MN: If it turned out that you came to understand that the Bible said you should be structured a different way [not - does the church do good things and has the church been helpful to you], would you, as a member, be willing to go through the pain and effort of changing over to an elder structure? Why or why not? )
RR and Melvin, one of my theology profs in seminary told us about the process they went through to go from a single pastor/deacon board structure to a “plural elder” model with deacons as servants, not administrators. Their pastor (who is now one of their “teaching pastors”) taught about New Testament church government and structure from the appropriate passages in the Scriptures for a YEAR (!!!) before they even started to discuss bringing on a team of elders to lead the church. Basically, they were teaching their congregation what the Bible said a church was supposed to look like without being all confrontational about it.
Folks were coming up to the pastor and saying things like, “You know, maybe we ought to bring on more lay pastors, maybe re-think the way we govern this church” before the men in authority ever said that in so many words. The Scriptures are powerful to change hearts and minds!
(MN: The same thing Eric is doing. We’ve spent the last month and a half just re-calibrating people’s thinking, establishing that the Bible is the final authority and we need align our behavior and standards to it. How well actions work is not as important as how well we align ourselves with the Bilble. He spent several weeks just establishing this.
Now he is in the process of teaching the congregation about what the Bible says about elders vs deacons and the such.
He will then start on deacons and their wives.
He’s even having us talk to each other about the changes. We’re talking about our concerns, our understanding of what the Bible actually says and means, the implications and “dnagers.”
Several of the deacons have actually come to him PUBLICLY and apologized for being so resistant at the beginning of the process. He didn’t even have to pull a “Corleone” and have a couple of them wake up with a mangled communion dish in their bed. )
Maybe I didn’t say it correctly Melvin,but I am in a church where there are Elders. I am no longer in the deacon board or usher board are whatever board mentality. There are no boards.It is based like the New Testament. I hope that explains that. Yes, i can tell the difference in how it is structured. There is also more accountibility. Unlike where i came from, there was not. Yes, i am willing to change according to the Word of God to the Elder structure. (MN: My bad. I completely misunderstood you. Forget the mean and vicious things I was muttering while I was typing in the first response. )
Would it be wrong to have agressive change, as in a sudden changeover? Sometimes, it seems that even the benefit of taking things slowly can be detrimental when people aren’t realizing the seriousness of an issue……
(MN: No. But it would be foolish - which perhaps does make it wrong. But why inflict such angst, panic, and anger for something that isn’t absolutely and immediately damaging? Besides, you have to train and select the elders and teach the congregation exactly what to expect. You have to put a structure into place. These take time. You have to make sure folks understand what the issues are. It takes time to make them aware of the seriousness of the issues. Implementing a change suddenly would be like trying to turn an ocean liner on a dime. Maybe you can do it, but stuff sure is going to get torn up in the process. And unless I’m trying to miss an iceberg, why would I try to turn an ocean liner on a dime, even if I could?
Humans don’t like change. And scaring the beejesus out of them by making a sudden and significant change doesn’t edify them. Just within a family, if you do devotion at one time during the day, you better have a REALLY good reason for changing just the time of day that you do devotion. Humans are human and you have to work within that fact. Heck, Jesus worked with his disciples for three years, and they STILL got totally stressed when the time came. )
That I see, Bruh, but I also consider the churches where there has been rapid turnaround in certain churches and people made it just fine…..whether it was on issues such as changing one’s system of giving (i.e. tithing verses free-will giving), relocating funding from a building needs/non-essentials toward other avenues like benevolence/missionarieschanging the order of a service from having a minister of music lead everyone to everyone singing together, & various other issues, having the church become multi-cultural, and other things.
Sometimes, change happened and explaining happened afterward.
This happened at my church where the congregation was 90% white & not really interested in becoming relevant to differing ethnicities. The Pastor made clear it was unbiblical to not be multi-cultural/intentionally sought multi-cultural elders. Though half the church left, we ended up gaining MUCH more in the end, as our church is now vibrantly multi-cultural
At best, it seems like a case-by-case basis…..
Oh wow, it is sooo timely that you are on this topic. I think the Lord is really leading me away from my current church so I have been just thinking, praying, and thinking about what to do next. I have considered that I may have to go to an all white church. Hey just call me the token.
But one of things I have considered is a church where there is a plurality of elders. So I hope the discussion continues on this topic because my heart is warmed as I read about John Macarthur’s church, and Piper, and Melvin’s church. Oh just the thought of not being subject to the whims and dictates of an one man show makes this ole gal glad—fascinating!
Curious,
Though their ministries are appreciated, I’m guessing this means even the big name folks such as Macarther, John Piper and others are in serious error since their churches don’t hold to the ELDER structure.
(MN: If they don’t hold to an Elder structure [qualifications, etc], then they are, I do believe, in error. Are the church and leaders all going to bust hell wide open? No. Are they in line with Scripture? No. )
They’re moreso ones where they’re the star players with deacons under them…..& though they call things out, when confronted on it, no one does anything due sayings like “Well, we all see Scripture differently”….or the pragmatic reasoning of “It works, Use It” or “Look at how much good we’ve done.”
Why it seems they seem to get alot of slack on the issue?
Gabriel, Bethlehem Baptist where John Piper preaches does have plural elders. They call them pastors, which is legit — I agree with the interpretation that says elder, pastor, bishop, overseer, etc., in the original language are interchangeable.
Grace Community Church, where John MacArthur preaches, also has a plural elder structure. They call them elders, and differentiate between “staff” and “lay” elders.
It took me about 2 minutes to find this out.
It would be good if Double-G (G²) refrained from speaking on the structure of church assemblies he has no knowledge of.
There is to be a speaking elder/pastor/bishop/overseer/(all the same thing) and other elders of equal weight who are involved in decision making for that local church. Everyone sees the speaking elder most, but others are to be there working although not necessarily as visible.
If the speaking elder gets out of line, another elder is to be able to step in as speaking elder and the elders sit the rebuked elder down.
Laura,
Perhaps I should’ve clarified what I meant when I mentioned “ELDER” structure……but specifically, where I’m coming from is the perspective that for pastors with that much influence, how personally do they know their congregations and can shepherd them like SHEPHERDS/ELDERS did in the Bible?
They are the STAR-PLAYERS and the MAIN ONES HEARD with their names at the forefront…..and elders biblically shared even the duties of preaching/teaching.
This doesn’t happen often at their churches, as they are continually the main ones speaking 4 30 minutes…….unless I missed it when researching. Is it Biblical for one man to have center-stage in a church?
G-dub,
Ummm…little brother, I think there’s more to consider when you talk about men like Piper and Mac. Yes there is a plurality of elders structure that is supported by the scriptures, but if any specific men are “star players” or “main ones heard”, it is only because of the grace that God has shown. Remember Paul’s own words?
“For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” (1 Corinthians 15:9-11 ESV).
The apostle talks about how he labored more intensely than the other apostles because he was one born out of due time, but he attributes this to God’s grace, and also expresses how he considered himself to be the least of the apostles. Doesn’t this match with another scripture which discusses elders who work hard in the doctrine?
“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Timothy 5:117-18)
Now, I find it interesting that the pimps use this to justify people paying them tithes and offerings, but they totally ignore the issue of “working hard in word and doctrine” as the justification for reward. They talk about some “dream” or “vision” that they had for the body, when it was just that they ate a quarter pounder with cheese from Mickey Dee’s before they went to bed. You must also understand the humility that comes with the service to God’s people. The exaltation that comes along with that is nothing that Piper and Mac had to do with, unless you can find some area in their life and teaching in which they promoted themselves or brought attention to what they were doing in a negative light. I won’t say that this is beyond them, as they are capable of sinning and missing the mark just like the rest of us. I will even go as far to say that these men probably have sinned in some way, although it hasn’t been made public. One crucial aspect of eldership is humility, which I believe has been exhibited by these men, especially in the area of being able to recieve correction with love (someone correct me if they see otherwise). And if humility is what God sees in these men, doesn’t He mention how he regards it? (James 4:6, James 4:10, 1 Peter 5:5-7). So I highly doubt that they expect to be “famous” or “star players” in any way. Normally the reason you would have a team of elders is due to the fact that there is growth within the body, and other mature men in Christ can share the load with regards to counsel, teaching, correction, discipline and exhortation. This is probably not seen on a national level, but no doubt is occuring locally on a regular basis. Moreover, I’m of the firm belief that you can tell whether or not the elders are doing thier jobs or not based not on what you hear nationally, but by the spiritual maturity of the congregants. And since you don’t attend Grace Community Church or Bethlehem Baptist…
Even when Paul and Barnabas denounced the people at Lystra for attempting to ascribe worship to them, it was noted that Paul was the chief speaker (Acts 14:11-13). However, I know that you understand that Paul didn’t care about it then either.
“This doesn’t happen often at their churches, as they are continually the main ones speaking 4 30 minutes…….unless I missed it when researching. Is it Biblical for one man to have center-stage in a church?”
By now you understand the “center-stage” issue, as I’m sure that it’s not a big deal to these men. Remember that the message that is being preached “center-stage” is a representation of what the church believes that is given to the masses, and it is the job of the elders to check Mac and Piper if they percieve that what they are preaching nationally does not line up with scripture or proper doctrine. However, with these two, you don’t tend to see much heresy being expressed, now do you? Step back, take a deep breath and consider looking at this again. When you do, get back to me. Besides, I can assure you that the 30 minutes you hear Mac speak probably came out of at least 30 HOURS of studying a particular topic…Hit me up this weekend lil’ bro’…
Solus Christus,
R4C
Also, keep in mind that most churches like this (i.e. with plural elders) have a few pastors who are primarily responsible for teaching and a few who are primarily responsible for “ruling” or administration. What this looks like in their churches is that they do a lot of the teaching (though it’s shared by other pastors). But not everyone is as gifted a writer as, say, John Piper or CJ Mahaney — certainly not all the pastors at one church!
I’ve met CJ Mahaney and can tell you he’s one of the kindest, humblest men I’ve met. He certainly is not seeking the spotlight, and in fact really works hard not to stand out, but to pass the microphone, the spotlight, the stage, and the glory to his brothers and ultimately to Christ. Plus he’s a huge sports fan and loves to make fun of Al Mohler about it constantly, so you gotta love the guy for that at least, right?
Thanks for the gracious reply, Brah…..though you’ll forgive me as I still have my reservations on some things. Prior to Laura’s response, I researched both Mac’s and P’s ministries respectively on DEACONS/ELDERS…..and though in agreement with much of what they/ you said, I still think some things aren’t fully biblical.
(MN: This is an example of your nattering. We’re looking at what the Bible says, not whether or not MacArthur’s uses Elders. Stick to the topic - Elders. )
Will hit you up further this weekend….though consider investigating some of the articles from the church I suggested to Brother Dominic (NTFR) as their ministry’s stance on Elder Structures is what I’m on currently.
It’s not nattering, Brah, as we’ve been looking at what the Bible says on ELDERS (MN: And you weren’t talking about what the Bible says. You were talking about MacArthur and company. I don’t care what they are doing or what you think they are doing. Neither addresses what the Bible says or your interpretation of it. If you respond to this continuing to say that you are not nattering, you will be banned from this discussion thread. Any questions? ) ……and Macarther/Piper were examples of one common view of what the elder structure looks like (i.e. with one main speaker, as opposed to the other view of elders in which everyone rotates speaking/teaching duties so no one’s in the spotlight).
If you’re gonna jump on me, be consistent with others as they commented as well….& if you didn’t want to go there, why do you seemingly give approval by allowing the initial comment to begin with? (MN: Because you are not following the rules I laid down at the beginning of this discussion. You even started “wondering” about pragmatism. )
Melvin,it’s ok. No hard feelings. I assumed that you might have misunderstood what i had written so i just clarified it further. See you have a ” soft ” side. I thought McArthur did have an Elder structure. I am not sure of John Piper. I have to research that.