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What I Have Found
My introduction to "brethren" assemblies.*
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One famous coach defined the game of football as, "22 men of the field in desperate need of rest, surrounded by 50,000 spectators in desperate need of exercise." A similar state of affairs exists in most churches today, because of the notion that one must have professional credentials to publicly preach and teach the Word of God or to shepherd the flock of God. Thus the potentially mighty army of God is neatly subdivided into a handful of active duty soldiers and a vast company of spectators, "lay people," who cheer the soldiers on with their attendance at meetings and their financial support.
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Now in all fairness I should say that many pastors deplore this state of affairs as much as anybody. They see their role, not as monopolizing the work of the ministry, but as equipping the saints to share in the ministry. This desired result, however, rarely comes to pass, the reason being that the clergy-laity distinction is the great demobilizer of the saints. The perception is simply too deeply ingrained that certain elements of Christian work are reserved for a special "called" few. On one occasion, as I began to see the New Testament truth concerning these things, I shared my burden with some of the men of the church, suggesting that others besides the "pastor" should be involved, for instance, in preaching and teaching the Word in the public meetings of the church. One of the dear men, in all sincerity, replied, "But Pastor, we haven't studied like you have." My first reaction was to ask, "Why not?" For I can say without hesitation that 99 percent of what I know of the Bible (and pitiably little it is), I have learned, not from theological seminary, but from personal study of the Scriptures and from the writings of godly men, the same resources every saint of God ought to be taking advantage of on a regular basis. In fact, many theologically-trained men would add their voice to mine in admitting that their seminary training, far from qualifying them to expound the riches of the Word of God, was a soul-withering experience from which they had to recover spiritually before being effective in ministering the Word.
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