Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
Again, it is very difficult to read these cryptic posts.
It appears you feel an elder has "laid his hands on someone hastily" and that was done in a "spirit of partiality".
This would be impossible to judge based on the information you have provided. It seems the elder has chosen someone from a family that has had a history with the church but the person in that family that has been chosen is in your opinion unfit or immature.
The act of selecting church leaders very often leads to a rift in the congregation. Personally I think this is a process I would want to have nothing to do with. If you raise up the saints in a locality through the gospel, establish the meetings and build this meeting up into a church, you will then be in a position to make these decisions. Also, you will be in a position to do this process without feeling the pressure of politics.
However, if your "appointment" was political to begin with you have no choice but to make your decision according to the same partiality that you were chosen with.
So what you are probably being offended at is an offense that has been there for quite some time.
This reminds me of an interesting story about the church I am currently meeting with. The original pastor did just that, he came from Texas to NY, preached the gospel, built up a meeting and established a church. He then contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion during an operation in the hospital prior to when they could test for AIDS. At this same time the Lord called another pastor who had done the same thing in India to leave India and come to NY for the gospel. He had raised up 3 churches and had a congregation of several thousand but felt he needed to drop everything and heed the Lord's call. So he was preaching the gospel on the streets of NY when he came in contact with someone who gave him a gospel tract from our congregation. He decided to come out and visit. When he arrived he met a man he mistook to be the gardener who said "What took you so long?" It was the first pastor who was dying of AIDS, but happened to be working in the yard at the time. He had prayed, the Lord had spoken to him and apparently he recognized this man to the be the one the Lord had sent in answer to his prayers.
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I do not think speaking in generality is being cryptic. Certainly with the LC history we have seen through this forum, there has been a pattern of partiality and condemnation without investigation. I had been doing a word search and suprised to see partiality mentioned 19 times in the Bible. I regret the message I am getting at is not obvious.
Allow me to place it in these terms:
Brothers are quarantined (Nigel Tomes, Titus Chu, etc)
you must honor the feeling of the body.
Based on reading
www.afaithfulword.org, it is co-workers leading Living Stream Ministry, as representatives of the Body who express the feeling of the Body.
Based on this definition from our brothers at DCP, partiality endorsed as a standard practice.