As many who know me will attest I love the local church because Jesus loves the local church. It is the primary vehicle through which the Lord works. It is the visible expression of membership in the universal church. Acts spends 16% of the time talking about the universal church and 84% speaking about the local church. Local churches are autonomous, or independent bodies; that is with Christ as the head over the Elders and congregation there is no organization or denomination that ultimately force a congregation to do or believe X,Y or Z, though many congregations choose to affiliate with other likeminded believers.
We may be independent but really we should exist independency with other Gospel churches. Independency is seeing independent churches working together for the cause of Christ. All too often local churches can exist as silos as if the rest of the church did not exist. This is surely to the detriment of Christianity. We see the principle of independency well illustrated in Baptist history and the Bible:
This is why we already partner in Association pastors’ gatherings and New Life Camp, why local pastors meet for Bible study and prayer, exchange pulpits and why MBC holds Christian events of interest for other churches. Independent; yet independency. Comments are closed.
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Author: Chris CrockerPastor, historian and beekeeper. Archives
July 2022
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