Why that sounds like you are calling for some elders to write a Talmud!
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Corporate Christianity
- Thread starter Verifyveritas76
- Start date
I've also found the shakedown that happens at many churches/ministries despicable.
At our group we have a "tsedaqah box" off to the side. Anyone who wants to give can quietly slip loot in an unmarked envelop without attracting attention; there is no designated time during service where a basket goes around and everyone is watching.
We don't do tax deduction tracking or anything to track contributions by members; it's encouraged to be anonymous. I briefly taught about tithing recently based on the Torah and explained how much of it is to be given to poor people and doesn't have to pass through a religious institution first. Also, part of tithe (the 2nd tithe) is to be enjoyed by the family doing religious things, i.e. retreats etc (used to be that folks would go to Jerusalem and buy "whatever your soul desires", wine, liquor, meats, etc. and "enjoy it before the L-rd your G-d". When's the last time you heard a preacher tell you, "make sure to take part of your tithe and take your family on a retreat/spiritual getaway full of yummy food. Make sure to get your favorite stuff then eat it and enjoy. G-d is watching!!!!".
HmmmmWhy that sounds like you are calling for some elders to write a Talmud!
That wasn’t what I had in mind, but now that you mention it............
Ahem.
Stay tuned. I have some guidance that I'm supposed to "make time" for a book project, and some interesting things have started to fall into place for me for this summer. The issue right now is that I have at least 3 or 4 books inside of me; I have to figure out where to start. More will be revealed....
I don’t have a lot of time to reply to this ATM so this is more of a bump. I do get what you’re saying but I think it’s more accurate to say that I’m comparing two distinctly different models rather than looking at a single model from the wrong end.
Bumping again! One of the things I try to do to verify a perspective is compare modern Christianity against anything I can find in the first 2 centuries. After going thru a huge amount (including the 7 letters from Ignacius, Bishop of Antioch) the single mention that I found was already given in an earlier post from the Didache.
This single mention only lists firstfruits to a teacher or prophet. If you know anything about firstfruits you know that this is like an honorary gift and wouldn’t be enough to support a single guy let alone a family.
I was really surprised at Ignatius’ letters. This is the guy that I believe started the vicar on earth mentality, going so far as to say that believers should honor their bishop as if he were God on the earth. The only thing he mentions about reward for the bishop is that the bishop should expect his reward from the Captain of his faith because if he got paid, is that not commerce? (Posting from a week old memory. I’ll try to get the exact quote up later).
At this point, I’m up to Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. I’ll update when I get thru their stuff.
This single mention only lists firstfruits to a teacher or prophet. If you know anything about firstfruits you know that this is like an honorary gift and wouldn’t be enough to support a single guy let alone a family.
I was really surprised at Ignatius’ letters. This is the guy that I believe started the vicar on earth mentality, going so far as to say that believers should honor their bishop as if he were God on the earth. The only thing he mentions about reward for the bishop is that the bishop should expect his reward from the Captain of his faith because if he got paid, is that not commerce? (Posting from a week old memory. I’ll try to get the exact quote up later).
At this point, I’m up to Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. I’ll update when I get thru their stuff.
I'd probably chalk that up to small beginnings.
Along the lines of thinking about completely different models, being a 'Pastor' in the early church wasn't a career choice. If anything, it was likely a death sentence.
@Verifyveritas76, we agree that there is very little worth in the modern, corporate church structure, but I have three problems with your line of thinking:
1) The letters and histories of the first two centuries are not accepted canon by any free church I know of. They don't hold any weight compared to scripture. In my opinion, it's just a record, not a mandate, or even a model.
2). Why just the first two centuries? Why not third and fourth? Are you afraid of getting closer to Rome?
3) Are you cherry picking those histories as your model church? Why not model your church on the couch in every way on their traditions? If so, you should probably give up the couch and order some lounge pillows. Perhaps, you should cut your electricity and order some tallow candles....and so forth.
Primarily because of generational drift. I.e. the closer to the source, the more accurate the teaching. As to your concerns,
1. Most free churches are incredibly ignorant of the history of the church outside of what’s in the canon and even that exposure is filtered through the lenses of Catholicism and Protestantism. I’m convinced that this is deliberate because once you start studying the actual New Testament church and its immediate children, it creates a picture of what a real “Christian” church looks like that is nothing like what we assume or have been taught its supposed to look like.
2. The first two centuries have history, apologetics and commentary from many men who sat under and were taught directly by the apostles or those instructed and appointed by the apostles themselves. Irenaeus and Polycarp in particular are prominent in their lineage and connection and Irenaeus is a prolific and understandable writer and bishop.
3 I should probably dress up like them too.
As to cherry picking, I don’t think thats what I’m doing. There are a variety of churches during this period, each with differences in how they do things and all with universal things that that are “normal” and also things that are never done.Basically the light shines brightest, the closest to the source.
Did the Bible talk to us about what kind of furniture to use during the sunday meeting? No. But it does talk about the lord's supper and love feasts and you'll learn more accurate information about that that meant from history than from looking at what your neighborhood church does. A lot of what we do in church today has more to do with recent history and pagan baggage than anything instituted by the Apostles.
Primarily because of generational drift. I.e. the closer to the source, the more accurate the teaching. As to your concerns,
1. Most free churches are incredibly ignorant of the history of the church outside of what’s in the canon and even that exposure is filtered through the lenses of Catholicism and Protestantism. I’m convinced that this is deliberate because once you start studying the actual New Testament church and its immediate children, it creates a picture of what a real “Christian” church looks like that is nothing like what we assume or have been taught its supposed to look like.
2. The first two centuries have history, apologetics and commentary from many men who sat under and were taught directly by the apostles or those instructed and appointed by the apostles themselves. Irenaeus and Polycarp in particular are prominent in their lineage and connection and Irenaeus is a prolific and understandable writer and bishop.
3 I should probably dress up like them too.
Basically the light shines brightest, the closest to the source.
Closer to the source, just means closer. It's a big leap to say more accurate, especially when you actually have the source intact. Brandeis, Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren were writing Supreme Court opinions about 150-200 years after the constitution was ratified. I wouldn't exactly say their interpretations were more accurate or brighter than Thomas Jefferson, or even Clarence Thomas for that matter.
1). Appreciation for material isn't the same as granting it authority. All believers should appreciate the writings of the early church, but not as authority.
2). Sounds a little close to RCC doctrines for me. Commentary? Yes. Authentic Christian church? Not necessarily.
3). Still cherry picking. None of them used an online forum.
I’m not understanding your responses at all. Could you please elaborate.
@Verifyveritas76, I appreciate your approach and your conclusions, but I'm still concerned about your perspective on the simple idea of returning value where value is received.
As for church fathers, you can look in the early writings for an extended discussion re whether and how much and how often to pay 'rulers' or 'elders', and you may not find it, but you can't rule out the possibility that it's not really discussed simply because it was common and unremarkable. Sort of like the absence of any real reference by Jesus to the practice of polygamy; it doesn't tell us what He thought about it, but it's a jump to say that because He didn't mention it it wasn't happening or that it should never happen.
As I mentioned above, the ordinary practice in Eastern cultures has been to repay in material service or goods what one receives from a teacher or guru. (I'd be interested to know more about first century practice in Jewish culture and in Greek culture if anybody knows something about this.) And we all understand the division of labor and specialization, and in modern Anglo culture we typically expect to exchange value for ongoing specialized services rather than give or receive charity (unless it's needed, particularly in the short term). Just doesn't seem like much of a stretch.
To be clear, I 100%-and-then-some agree with you when it comes to house churches, cell churches, kinship groups, small group fellowships, whatever you want to call them. A group of four or five men and the families they represent can organize itself, and nobody really 'rules' that small group. But once you get past a certain size (say, a city-wide body that hasn't descended into denominational mayhem), then organizing and unifying the larger group becomes a separate skill, and eventually becomes a full-time job. And I believe a plain reading of 1 Ti 5:17 teaches that that job has value to the recipients of those services, and done well has double the value.
As for church fathers, you can look in the early writings for an extended discussion re whether and how much and how often to pay 'rulers' or 'elders', and you may not find it, but you can't rule out the possibility that it's not really discussed simply because it was common and unremarkable. Sort of like the absence of any real reference by Jesus to the practice of polygamy; it doesn't tell us what He thought about it, but it's a jump to say that because He didn't mention it it wasn't happening or that it should never happen.
As I mentioned above, the ordinary practice in Eastern cultures has been to repay in material service or goods what one receives from a teacher or guru. (I'd be interested to know more about first century practice in Jewish culture and in Greek culture if anybody knows something about this.) And we all understand the division of labor and specialization, and in modern Anglo culture we typically expect to exchange value for ongoing specialized services rather than give or receive charity (unless it's needed, particularly in the short term). Just doesn't seem like much of a stretch.
To be clear, I 100%-and-then-some agree with you when it comes to house churches, cell churches, kinship groups, small group fellowships, whatever you want to call them. A group of four or five men and the families they represent can organize itself, and nobody really 'rules' that small group. But once you get past a certain size (say, a city-wide body that hasn't descended into denominational mayhem), then organizing and unifying the larger group becomes a separate skill, and eventually becomes a full-time job. And I believe a plain reading of 1 Ti 5:17 teaches that that job has value to the recipients of those services, and done well has double the value.
There, that defines the difference a bit better.
Compensating a man whose time has been sacrificed for the greater good, as opposed to being obligated to support a man who is attempting to build a job/career.
Yeah, but let's go a little farther with this. I'm just thinking out loud here; I'll realize what I'm thinking after I've written it out! 
The guy who's gonna be a 'twice the price' elder some day has to start somewhere. The guy who's offering to mow your yard today may be a landscape architect in a few years who will design your outside lighting or something. Some people will pay someone else to cut their grass and that's an economically efficient use of their money v their time, some people will pay someone else because they're lazy and don't want to work or save, some will mow it themselves because they're financially responsible and strapped for time or need the exercise or they just enjoy being outside or all of the above. So before we get to division of labor at the higher levels where actual expertise starts to be a factor, there's still a division of labor at the lower levels where things are a little fuzzier.
And I'm not sure about the utility of 'moralizing' these preferences at the lower level. Each of us as an adult male has to figure out the best deployment of his time and treasure. What do we do ourselves, what do we pay others to do for us?And how do we judge others, and why even start? The more I study and think about it, I think the vast decades-long slide toward moralizing preferences that should be left open for various men to reach various conclusions on is part and parcel of the feminization of our culture and centralization of authority (that used to reside in the head of household) in a globalist bureaucracy.
Illustration: I just completed about a week in the yard taking down trees to get ready for a new septic system next week. I enjoyed the work and the workout, but now I'm about to hire a guy I know to do some deck repairs I was planning to do myself. I am capable of doing them myself, but I am running out of time before Kurt's wedding, and I'm having to make triage decisions about where my time goes and where my money goes. And I don't think there's a 'right' or a 'wrong' to those choices as much as a creative 'duty to take responsibility and decide'.
I think the question of 'value for services rendered' is relatively simple. I think the real question presented is, "What services are biblical elders supposed to provide (what does προεστωτες really mean, anyhow?)", and its companion piece, "What services do modern corporate church leaderships provide and why?".
Last thought (I gotta run): Where @Verifyveritas76 and I overlap nearly 100% is in our distaste for the infantilization of the men of the body of Christ by the corporate hierarchy. We are paying the 'church' to teach our children and our women, to entertain us, to motivate us, and to do the work that every Christian should be doing himself or with and through his family, or in comradeship with a small band of other men. What would it look like to have a biblical five-fold equipping ministry building up a biblical body that would be ruled, and ruled well, by biblical elders? That's the real question. If we can figure that out, I don't think we'll be stuck on 1 Tim 5:17 much longer.
The guy who's gonna be a 'twice the price' elder some day has to start somewhere. The guy who's offering to mow your yard today may be a landscape architect in a few years who will design your outside lighting or something. Some people will pay someone else to cut their grass and that's an economically efficient use of their money v their time, some people will pay someone else because they're lazy and don't want to work or save, some will mow it themselves because they're financially responsible and strapped for time or need the exercise or they just enjoy being outside or all of the above. So before we get to division of labor at the higher levels where actual expertise starts to be a factor, there's still a division of labor at the lower levels where things are a little fuzzier.
And I'm not sure about the utility of 'moralizing' these preferences at the lower level. Each of us as an adult male has to figure out the best deployment of his time and treasure. What do we do ourselves, what do we pay others to do for us?And how do we judge others, and why even start? The more I study and think about it, I think the vast decades-long slide toward moralizing preferences that should be left open for various men to reach various conclusions on is part and parcel of the feminization of our culture and centralization of authority (that used to reside in the head of household) in a globalist bureaucracy.
Illustration: I just completed about a week in the yard taking down trees to get ready for a new septic system next week. I enjoyed the work and the workout, but now I'm about to hire a guy I know to do some deck repairs I was planning to do myself. I am capable of doing them myself, but I am running out of time before Kurt's wedding, and I'm having to make triage decisions about where my time goes and where my money goes. And I don't think there's a 'right' or a 'wrong' to those choices as much as a creative 'duty to take responsibility and decide'.
I think the question of 'value for services rendered' is relatively simple. I think the real question presented is, "What services are biblical elders supposed to provide (what does προεστωτες really mean, anyhow?)", and its companion piece, "What services do modern corporate church leaderships provide and why?".
Last thought (I gotta run): Where @Verifyveritas76 and I overlap nearly 100% is in our distaste for the infantilization of the men of the body of Christ by the corporate hierarchy. We are paying the 'church' to teach our children and our women, to entertain us, to motivate us, and to do the work that every Christian should be doing himself or with and through his family, or in comradeship with a small band of other men. What would it look like to have a biblical five-fold equipping ministry building up a biblical body that would be ruled, and ruled well, by biblical elders? That's the real question. If we can figure that out, I don't think we'll be stuck on 1 Tim 5:17 much longer.
I haven't had much time to post lately and rushed that one, so I can understand if that one may be puzzling. Ive gotta run soon, so this may be enigmatic too. I think a sit down would be easier for me to explain, but here goes.
@andrew pretty much encapsulated where part of my mind was also going on this (specialization, skill, and economics of time) so I won't bother elaborating much on that end.
My basic point in the post you wanted elaboration on is that you are using historical records of the early church and seem to be making the leap from "a practice", to "best practice", then to "this should be the only practice".
There is no prohibition in first source material (NT) and there actually seems to be an encouragement of it! That's where we should stop. Canon is my only authority, not later judgments. If there's no prohibition in first source, then grace allows discretion. You can't necessarily use the practices of the EC to fill in the absence of how it looked in scripture, and then extrapolate that to all of the church in perpetuity.
As you read Second, third, and fourth generation material, you feel that paying an elder is discouraged by the early church or is not mentioned. What they practiced is only "a practice" in my mind, but you seem to be interpreting it as "best practice". I mentioned liberal Supreme Court justices who wrote decisions (interpretations and commentary) three and four generations removed from the source material (Constitution) because they then often rendered judgments of "this should be the only practice" using a combination of absence of language in the first source (Constitution) then case law, and finally their own imaginations to make rulings that ended up being antithetical to the original intent of the Constitution. These justices were writing judgments only 150-200 years after the source materials were written. By your logic, they are valid. I contend that proximity to source isn't cause for us to render the writings and histories of the early church as necessarily valid and worthy of a "best practice" moniker. In addition to that, it seems like you are rendering your own judgment as "this should be the only practice" on all believers.
I mentioned the cherry picking example of using an online forum to show that absence of specific practice isn't necessarily a prohibition. I will grant you that The NT doesn't spell out how the compensation of a faithful servant works out, but absence doesn't equal prohibition. There's no mention of online forums either, but that doesn't equal prohibition. If you then tell me "Yes, but the EC fathers did this and that!" My response would be "...And...???? Those guys hold no sway on my practice. These guys also started ruling out polygyny pretty early on (largely based on Roman culture). "
Love you brother. Gotta go. Hope I made sense.
That makes more sense. Gotta go for now but will respond as soon as I can. We’re getting ready for some pretty serious weather here.
Well be praying our Oklahoma families.
We have two warnings at the moment. One circulation just went right over our house on the news. They’re not sure if it was on the ground. I guess we’ll see in the morning if its still there. 
The second looks like its on track to follow that one.
The second looks like its on track to follow that one.