Overstating My Case? A Second Reflection on 1 Tim. 3:15

Recently I suggested that a local church is not the pillar and ground of the truth because of the tendency that local churches have to stray into error. Dave Doran has rightly challenged my use of 1 Tim. 3:15, and I confess that I should have phrased things differently. In the text in question, Paul is giving instructions to Timothy for local assemblies. Indeed, churches rightly ordered are pillars and grounds of the Truth. Note that in the text of 1 Timothy, the phrase is anarthrous so that we are talking of a pillar and ground and not the pillar and ground.

However, local churches are and should recognize that there is something larger than themselves. Early fundamentalism, reflecting a landmarkist disposition perhaps unwittingly, retreated from larger efforts among churches and fragmented to the point that in today’s world, ministries are often started with no apparent thought for other churches. If a ministry meets an immediate need for my church today, then that alone justifies its beginning. Witness the plethora of churches in the 1970s that felt compelled to start Christian day schools. Why every church needed its own school, and churches could not work together to have a consolidated effort in this regard is a puzzle. The result has been a lot of poorly-run and poorly-funded Christian schools, many of which have failed.

In more recent days, we have seen a third fundamentalist Baptist college started in the state of Wisconsin. I am really trying to understand why Wisconsin needs three schools. We have seen such a proliferation of seminaries that we have actual brothers who pastor churches within a short distance of each other starting competing seminaries which vie for the same pool of students. Recently I have come into contact with two new mission agencies that have been started by local churches. One mission agency that I applied to during my missionary days, a local church-run mission, collapsed after the founding pastor retired. His successor moved the church in a different direction and the missionaries were forced to look for other agencies. What will keep these two new mission boards from doing what I have just described when their founding pastors are gone and the vision diminishes?

I was struck again with the idea of a larger work of the Lord while listening to Dan Brown preach in chapel recently. He gave a good exposition of Acts 20, Paul’s departing exhortation to the Ephesian elders. There was, apparently, only one church at Ephesus (Acts 20:17). It seems unlikely that this church held a single meeting. It no doubt consisted of multiple “cell” groups led by numerous elders.

In the days before Christianity had subdivided ad nauseum over doctrinal issues large and small, the believers at Ephesus were considered part of one church–the church at Ephesus. It seems highly unlikely that the church ever met as a unified group, though perhaps it did in its days of infancy. Logistically, “the church” needed many elders to care for pockets of believers across the city. Only in recent times and in the first world, do believers have the capacity to church shop and travel dozens of miles to find a church of their particular choice. In cultures where you walk to church, the local church actually means something.

In the same way, the church at Jerusalem grew beyond the capacity of a common meeting in any particular believer’s home. We know from the record of Acts that the numbers of converts simply made a common assembly impossible and impractical. Yet they were still considered a part of the same church—the church at Jerusalem. Was James merely the Mark Driscoll of his day, pastoring one church with multiple campuses through the city with multiple elders? Or were these separate assemblies that considered themselves a part of something larger and James was the leading elder in the city?

Today, the Minneapolis Church is fragmented beyond belief. There are numerous assemblies, each with their own identity and theological agenda. Even churches who more or less agree on the same core of doctrinal beliefs, really do not see themselves as part of something larger than themselves and often carry out their ministries without regard to others. New churches are planted by solitary churches without intentional partnership with other like-minded churches and sometimes in the neighborhoods of existing sister churches. Is this the way the Bible envisioned things? It seems to me that we have overemphasized the local church to the point that one can do ministry without consideration for anything beyond the needs of one’s own assembly. The larger a church is, the less it needs to work with others. If history tells me anything, it is that all churches go through cycles. Fourth Baptist Church used to be three times larger than it is today. At one time, Fourth had a thriving camp, a large Christian day school, a radio station, and a seminary. Today’s Fourth can no longer carry that load. If some of these ministries had been built in partnership with other assemblies, perhaps the ministrys’ futures would look brighter. This is not to say that Fourth is collapsing. Far from it. But our camp, for instance, is a large burden today for Fourth. Sadly, it is used only by a few other churches. How much better would the camp be today if Minnesota churches had worked together to fund and run the camp?

Baptists have from our beginning been a cooperating lot. In London in 1644, seven churches cooperatively produced the First London Confession. In 1707 the Philadelphia and New Jersey Baptists formed an association of churches that eventually started the College of Rhode Island. In the late 17th century British Baptists cooperated to start the Bristol Baptist College. After Judson converted to Baptist ways en route to India, American Baptists as a group started the Triennial Convention to promote missions collectively among American Baptists. In 1855 the Northumberland Association in central Pennsylvania united together to start the University of Lewisburg, which was eventually named Bucknell. It was Baptists working in concert with other Baptists beyond the context of particular local churches that saw these and a myriad of other works started.

Why is it that independent Baptists of today do not possess this cooperative spirit? It seems to me that many of our churches think wrongly (based on 1 Timothy 3:15) that they and they alone are the pillar and ground of the truth. Is there not more that we can do together and by doing so will not the work of the Lord be advanced?