Thank you, Tim, for your charity and for setting the example of believing the best about people and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
I am more concerned with Pergie's use of the quote than the quote itself, because I believe I know, based on many previous discussions, what mindset Pergie is advancing by using the quote. Even more than this am I concerned with Yoda's questioning the salvation of those who aren't formally involved in apologetics, missionary work, children's church (which doesn't even need to exist, but that's for another thread), or, here's the best part, Wycliffe or the Gideons. Packer may be guilty of a mere "infelicity of expression" (to use your terminology), but Yoda's assertion is quite clear. I'll quote it here again so it will be clear to what I am referring:
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Originally Posted by Yoda Every person who is a believer should be involved in some form of ministry whether it is evangelism, missionary work, apologetics, children's church, Gideons, Wycliff, small groups, etc etc etc.
I do wonder if our pews are just full of unbelievers hoping to get in by going to church and being good people? Or, do we have a bunch of spiritual babes who are fat and sassy? |
Note how he moves from adding to God's commandments to questioning the salvation or spiritual growth of our congregants. Your evaluation of the state of the Anglican communion in North America is irrelevant to this nonsense. Yoda's words have nothing to do with Anglicanism or Regent college.
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That Paul seems to restrict the term to the teaching ministry does not mean that the bible as a whole does so. Biblically, we can't restrict the term "ministry" to the authoritative teaching function in the church. It is also used of service functions: we find it used when Martha was overworking (Luke 10:40), of daily food distribution (Acts 6:1) and charitable relief (Acts 11:29). Even though we don't have job descriptions of these ministries, it is clear that the word can be used to mean a non-teaching or non-authoritative action or actions.
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I totally agree with you here. This is the point I intended to make in the last paragraph of my first response. Doing good deeds for believers and unbelievers outside the church, on our own time, in accordance with our means as opportunities present themselves, is the duty of every Christian. This is not, however, the same as saying that every believer has to be involved with some Church program with consistent quotas of time and energy such as are required of the ministers.