Quote:
Originally posted by biblelighthouse
Quote: Originally posted by Scott Bushey
So then, you have a membership? To be excommunicated from something, one must be communicated.
| You are "communicated" with MBC the first day you walk in the door. If you profess Christ, then you are considered "one of us" until we have good reason to believe otherwise. You can visit next Sunday and take the Lord's Supper, if you want.
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Joseph,
With all respect, there are two implications to this statement, and the first is ludicrous. If I happened to be visiting MBC for one Sunday, and then received a call from MBC that it was undertaking discipline against me, I would rightly tell them to bug off.
But the point then is, when is discipline proper? Two visits? Ten? 15? 32? 77?
Remember that discipine is
connectional - both in a positive and negative sense. That is why churches acknowledge baptisms and excommunications of other churches. But how would this apply to MBC? What if someone attended for 6 months, left, and then said that he never considered himself joined to them?
That is why the marriage analogy is applicable. A couple can in fact be married without the license and ceremony - it is called common law marriage - but it is FULL of problems. Common law marriage is a nightmare for custody, divorce, inheritance, etc. Why? Because the intentions of the parties are unclear.
Why would you want your intention to be accountable to a body to be unclear and subject to unilateral revocation?
Put another way: what stops someone from just telling MBC to jump off a cliff when they don't like it?