Sunday, December 13, 2009

Scripture as we live it (according to Alan)

From Alan Knox's Scripture As We Live It series

You [elders] yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me until you could afford to pay us a salary. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way in prayer and the study of Scripture we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed for others to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:34-35 re-mix)




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5 comments:

Jeremy Lee said...

Scripture as Alan Knox and Arthur Sido live it (1 Tim. 5:16-20 NKJV)

16 If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows.*
19 Do not receive an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses. 20 Those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all, that the rest also may fear.

* vs. 17, 18 Most MS contain these verses but we found them too inconvenient for our tastes so they have not been included.

Arthur Sido said...

Jeremy,

Well by all means let’s look at 1 Tim 5: 17-18 and see what is says and perhaps more importantly what it doesn’t say:

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 Tim 5: 17-18)

From those two verses we get: Pastors should draw their support from the local church to minister in that local church which includes preaching a couple of sermons, spending lots of time preparing those sermons, officiating weddings and funerals, counseling people and various administrative tasks. So your contention is that 1 Tim 5: 17-18 means: “Hire a man to preach twice a week, pay him a salary and benefits until he decides he is called to different church that will pay him more or the people get sick of him and fire him” and unless you walk in lockstep with that interpretation of this passage you are ignoring it?

Is that what 1 Tim 5: 17-18 is actually saying? Or is it possible that the professional clergy system was retained and modified from Rome and has been a self-serving and self-perpetuating system ever since and our traditional and cultural bias towards paying pastors leads us to read what we want to from the text?

Alan Knox said...

Jeremy,

Funny! :D

But, seriously, we honor both widows and our elders, especially those elders who lead and teach well. Sometimes this includes financial gifts, but not always. It depends on their needs and our resources. Right now, our family is helping another family buy one of our elders a dishwasher.

-Alan

Arthur Sido said...

Joe,

I accidently rejected your comment so feel free to post it again. Sorry, there isn't a way to recover it.

By the way, does "honor" = "permanent salary"?

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