[Toledo]

Just as a general sort of rambling response (to a general sort of rambling thread...), it occurs to me that we as believers share a number of general characteristics.

We like to read the bible.
We like to pray.
We like to sing.
We like to talk about Jesus.
We like to hear about Jesus.
We like to preach the gospel.
We like to see people saved.
We like to see people baptized.
We like to spend time with other believers.
We like to meet together.

We seem to be a very social bunch, enjoying our times together, enjoying other saints, talking and listening and singing together. It seems to me that it's very normal for us to want to come together as a "group". It is the individualistic Christians -- the hermits living in caves -- who are unusual. The first question most Christians ask is "where do you go to church?", because it is fundamentally assumed that a believer would want to meet together with other believers.

The difficulty would seem to be that we then conduct our meetings by Roberts Rules of Order, or some other manifestation of our fallen man. A good translation of ekklesia would be "congress", and all too often our meetings begin to function like congress.

What I liked (and still like) about the local churches was the understanding that all the believers are to be one, and we are not to divide ourselves off from other believers according to which meetings we choose to attend. What I didn't like (among many other things) about the local churches in general (and LSM in particular) is that the local churches also tend to divide themselves off from other believers according to which meetings we choose to attend.