So what really set me off last night was not the dispensational hermeneutic on display in the video, or the explanations of the different technical and non-technical uses of the word “church” in the Bible and contemporary Biblical times (that was pretty useful). There are lots of things that the instructor brought up that I would have liked to discuss with the other people in the class, especially some of the things he said that he got called on by students and he didn’t really have a response for, but we didn’t really have time. What was really irritating was the assertion that almost all of the reasons people give for not joining a church are unbiblical.
Really?
There can’t be any other reasons?
I would flip that around and ask what “Biblical” reasons one can cite for desiring to join a church as a “member”. It is not because of command or example in the Bible because there aren’t any. Citing the number of people who were converted at Pentecost or a list of widows is not an endorsement of formal church membership. The sincere desire to be under church discipline? Rarely happens and can happen just as easily in any assembly as it does in formal church membership structure.
The process we use today is so far removed from the Biblical norm that it is virtually unrecognizable. Where do we see “coming forward”? Where do we see six-week “new member classes”? Where do we see the congregation voting on accepting a new member or a examination before a consistory? There is only one vote that counts for belonging to the church and that vote belongs to Christ.
What was funny was the way the instructor was twisting in the wind when the students started hitting him with questions. I was not impressed with the instructor, I hope he is not typical of the faculty at TMS (but given that I have in around 35-40 credit hours with Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary toward an M. Div., I am afraid that it might be) but I was pretty impressed with the questions from the students. But the way that the guy getting paid to teach kept shoehorning church traditions into the text and then backpedaling and waffling when he got called on it is troubling. While I do spend a fair amount of time studying and pondering these things and I do have some seminary education, I hardly would qualify myself as a scholar but these glaring discrepancies and leaps of logic were so obvious that if I was catching them that easily, why was he so unprepared for them?
Very troubling.
Really?
There can’t be any other reasons?
I would flip that around and ask what “Biblical” reasons one can cite for desiring to join a church as a “member”. It is not because of command or example in the Bible because there aren’t any. Citing the number of people who were converted at Pentecost or a list of widows is not an endorsement of formal church membership. The sincere desire to be under church discipline? Rarely happens and can happen just as easily in any assembly as it does in formal church membership structure.
The process we use today is so far removed from the Biblical norm that it is virtually unrecognizable. Where do we see “coming forward”? Where do we see six-week “new member classes”? Where do we see the congregation voting on accepting a new member or a examination before a consistory? There is only one vote that counts for belonging to the church and that vote belongs to Christ.
What was funny was the way the instructor was twisting in the wind when the students started hitting him with questions. I was not impressed with the instructor, I hope he is not typical of the faculty at TMS (but given that I have in around 35-40 credit hours with Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary toward an M. Div., I am afraid that it might be) but I was pretty impressed with the questions from the students. But the way that the guy getting paid to teach kept shoehorning church traditions into the text and then backpedaling and waffling when he got called on it is troubling. While I do spend a fair amount of time studying and pondering these things and I do have some seminary education, I hardly would qualify myself as a scholar but these glaring discrepancies and leaps of logic were so obvious that if I was catching them that easily, why was he so unprepared for them?
Very troubling.
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