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It's timely that you should post this Pilgrim. I was just thinking about this when folks were commenting about how the PCA has some problems and that Baptists ought not to think the grass is always greener.
It's interesting to me that Baptists have an Independent Eccelesiology but then they usually criticize Presbyterian bodies instead of thinking of the Churches within them as Independent as their convictions would demand.
I remember a couple of years ago that a Baptist minister here was critical of the glacial pace that the NAPARC congregations were moving to address the FV controversy and thought at the time: "Why do you care?" In other words, many Presbyterian congregations were not FV and had resolved, within their local Sessions, that the FV wasn't going to intrude, and so the matter would be settled in a Baptist way of looking at the universe.
I've also noticed that independent congregations tend to look toward some unifying para-Church organizations to provide unity of effort when they want to do something bigger than what they can do locally. For instance, when Franklin Graham came to Okinawa, their training program became a proxy Presbytery in terms of dictating a specific training regime to Churches so they could participate in the Festival. Churches cared little about the fact that they were abandoning their distinctives in partnering with Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Methodists, etc as long as the larger goal (the Festival) was successful in getting maximum bang.
What is the Founder's Movement, in fact? Isn't there a sense in which many Baptists see this as a movement that can reform the Church at large? If the Church is, by nature, ruled and reformed and grown at the local level then why the need for a para-Church movement that accomplishes this end?
I'm really not writing this to pick a fight. I just find this sense or need for something larger than the local Church to point to something that those that believe in Independent Church government ought to take stock of.
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