Why we are Independent?

by David Cox
[G13] v1 ©2008
You may freely print this tract for non-profit use

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Why we are not part of a denom­i­na­tion or eccle­si­as­tic hierarchy

At times peo­ple ask me, “Why aren’t you part of a denom­i­na­tion group?” Oth­ers agree that they are not part of a denom­i­na­tion either, but they are part of church fel­low­ships that come to be almost the same thing. A denom­i­na­tion is a hier­ar­chy over local churches where they super­vise from above the local church.

The Bib­li­cal Model

The Bible presents a model for churches that is each church is a local inde­pen­dent church, autonomous, not mak­ing hier­ar­chies or author­i­ties over churches.

The Domin­ion of Peter. The Catholic Church declares that they are the bib­li­cal author­ity over every church with Peter as the first pope, and all “legit­i­mate” churches have to be sub­ject under their pope, “the Vic­tor of Christ.” Peter was the worse apos­tle with many errors because he is the only one who Jesus him­self said “Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me” Mat 16:23. More­over Paul had to rebuke Peter over his doc­trine and poor con­duct because of his errors (Gal 2:11). The poor exam­ple of Peter teaches us that men are not reli­able. We have to base our­selves on an inspired Bible, not men, nor on the apos­tles. It is against the will of God that we fol­low men that “draw away dis­ci­ples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). Then Paul, being a mis­sion­ary who was not one of the apos­tles, cor­rected the prin­ci­ple fig­ure among the apos­tles. Paul, work­ing out­side of an offi­cial com­mis­sion by the apos­tles, was nonethe­less rec­og­nized (Gal 2:9) by “the pil­lars” of the faith (James, Cephas, and John) even though he had no for­mal rela­tion­ship with them. This is not to boast of his inde­pen­dence, but rather to real­ize who has author­ity in the church. It is not a spir­i­tual father (guru) (Mat 23:8–10), nor the prin­ci­ple peo­ple in the church, nor the church as a human orga­ni­za­tion (where we his­tor­i­cally came from), but rather who adheres best to Scriptures.

The Inde­pen­dence of Paul. Paul came after Peter, and was a novice when the Apos­tle Peter was well estab­lished among the Apos­tles, but Paul was autho­rized directly from God. False teach­ers were com­ing from Jerusalem say­ing that all had to be cir­cum­cised in addi­tion to believ­ing in Christ (Acts 15:1–2). The church in Anti­och, with Paul and Barn­abas lead­ing them, con­fronted this heresy, and in the end, they went to Jerusalem to rebuke it. By being “the Jerusalem mother church” (Acts 11:19–21) did not make them immune from rebuke or doc­tri­nal exam­i­na­tion. The dis­cus­sion and logic of Scrip­tures was what had/has the author­ity of God, and not any “mother church.”

The rela­tion­ship between Mis­sion­ary, Mis­sion, and Mother Church. Some peo­ple who declare that every legit­i­mate church absolutely has to have come from a mother church (usu­ally them only), and thus they trace their roots back to the Apos­tles. Their pre­sump­tion is that nobody has author­ity except if it is con­ceded from a “legit­i­mate church”, going back to the Jerusalem church. Paul was the first gen­er­a­tion after the apos­tles, but he clearly declared that his doc­trine and under­stand­ing of the Scrip­tures did not come the apos­tles, but directly from heaven, from god. God called him indi­vid­u­ally, and he accom­plished his mis­sion. In Gal. 1:17–22, Paul declared that he had nei­ther rela­tion­ship nor author­ity from the church in Jerusalem for his min­istry. To the con­trary the dis­ci­ples refused to accept him when he sought to meet with them after his sal­va­tion (Acts 9:26–29). God told Paul to leave Jerusalem because they were not going to receive him, and so his accep­tance by them was not impor­tant (Acts 22:17–18). Paul had nei­ther author­ity nor rela­tion­ship with this “Jerusalem mother church”, but was directly autho­rized from God.

Act 13:1 Now there were in the church that was at Anti­och cer­tain prophets and teach­ers; as Barn­abas,… and Saul. As they min­is­tered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Sep­a­rate me Barn­abas and Saul for the work where­unto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

Barn­abas and Paul were lead­ers of the Anti­och church, and God called them to be mis­sion­ar­ies. “Sep­a­rate” is aphorizo, which means sep­a­rate, and “sent them away” is apoluo, to divorce, sep­a­rate, or totally lib­er­ate with­out fur­ther deal­ings. The church in Anti­och had no pow­ers of author­ity over these mis­sion­ar­ies “like their employ­ers” because they total divorced them­selves from this church as far as their min­istries were con­cerned. In Phil 4:15, Paul com­ments that in the begin­ning of his min­istry, only the Philip­pian church had sup­ported him. Paul had rela­tion­ship nei­ther with the Jerusalem church, nor with the Anti­och church. There was no “mother church” con­cept with author­ity over the mis­sion­ar­ies. The Anti­och church was not giv­ing to Paul in the begin­ning of his min­istry, although they prob­a­bly did give him dona­tions when he left them, but we do not see the tight obe­di­ence and sub­mis­sion some would teach.

The lack of author­ity in Paul’s Dealings

The Bible estab­lishes that every church is inde­pen­dent from any other entity that would have author­ity over it. Paul estab­lished local churches, but Paul did not teach that they had to sub­mit them­selves to Paul nor to the church where he orig­i­nally started out from (Anti­och) nei­ther to “the Jerusalem mother church.” Paul left them with the doc­trine of auton­omy. Almost all his churches fer­vently loved him and had ten­der affec­tion for him as their spir­i­tual father, except in the case of the Corinthian church (2Cor 3:1), where we see a frus­trated Paul argu­ing with a rebel­lious church which had pro­hib­ited Paul from even speak­ing with­out a “let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion” from their church lead­er­ship. This would be the per­fect oppor­tu­nity for Paul to give them a good con­vinc­ing argu­ment about “they are a mis­sion work of Paul, part of the Anti­och (or Jerusalem) church, and it is rebel­lion what they are doing!” But instead of this, we see a total absence of ideas of eccle­si­as­ti­cal of a church or mis­sion­ary who estab­lished their mis­sion work (term and con­cept never used in the Bible). Paul started churches, not mis­sions. Paul argued with them from the Scrip­ture, exposit­ing the truth by means of what God had said. Yes, he spoke with the author­ity of God (2Cor 10:8), but he never appealed to this author­ity as if he was their arch­bishop or some­thing sim­i­lar, but only as their beloved father (1Cor 4:15) that respected their auton­omy. With the con­stant attacks of false prophets that try to enslave the brethren (Gal 2:4) under their sys­tems and argu­ments of author­ity, God wanted every church to be autonomous. Every church had author­ity and respon­si­bil­ity for their own church, and noth­ing more, and with­out inter­ven­tion of outsiders.

The Four Columns of Independence

(1) Indi­vid­ual Obe­di­ence to God’s Will.

All this begins with and cen­ters on the strong com­mit­ment of the mem­bers and min­is­ters of the church to seek and com­ply with the will of God. Inde­pen­dence from oth­ers is not the same as doing what­ever you want, but is lib­erty to obey God as God speaks directly to your heart from His word (Chris­t­ian lib­erty Gal 2:4; 5:1, 13).

(2) Auto Governing.

God insti­tuted a group of elders in each local church to gov­ern (Titus 1:5), and we see no men­tion nei­ther of the pres­ence of out­side groups nor of out­side indi­vid­u­als gov­ern­ing or giv­ing orders in the local church. God has given the require­ments for dea­cons and bish­ops, and told the church itself; to “look ye out among you” (Acts 6:3–6). Paul spoke to the elders of Eph­esus (Acts 20:16–30) and clearly indi­cated to them “Take heed to your­selves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers” (20:28). There were not out­side enti­ties, but the Holy Ghost that called them and estab­lished them in church leadership.

The idea of a per­son or entity who makes impor­tant deci­sions for the flock is exactly the con­cept of “pas­tor”, one of the elders of the church. Paul (an apos­tle and mis­sion­ary) estab­lished many local churches, but Paul had to use bib­li­cal argu­ments to con­vince them of their prob­lems and solu­tions, and even though Paul was the founder of these churches, he respected their auton­omy. Paul’s inter­est was the estab­lish­ment of local elders in each church to admin­is­ter and supervise.

(3) Auto Sustaining.

These churches had a great pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with help­ing the poor among them (Gal 2:10 Only they would that we should remem­ber the poor; the same which I also was for­ward to do.” Acts 11:20–30; Rom 15:25–27; 1Cor 16:1; James 2:15–16; 1John 3:17). But always the prin­ci­ple is that every per­son should sus­tain him­self and work in order to help the needy (Eph 4:28; 1The 4:11–12). This prin­ci­ple extends to churches, in that no church should be eco­nom­i­cally depen­dent on out­siders. Help should be some­thing of love, not control.

(4) Auto Reproducing.

It is not pos­si­ble that the church (the divine model) should be free of evil influ­ences and forces of con­trol if it depends on enti­ties such as schools, sem­i­nar­ies, denom­i­na­tions, and fel­low­ships in order to func­tion and repro­duce. Today there is no lack of peo­ple who “help” the church by steal­ing their author­ity and min­istry. Each church should be a super strong instru­ment of God for evan­ge­liz­ing and teach­ing. Equally each church in par­tic­u­lar should be who pre­pares their min­is­ters and pushes the repro­duc­tion of local churches in the mis­sion field.

Bib­li­cal Fel­low­ship against Phariseeism

Mis­sion­ar­ies pro­moted a very strong fel­low­ship among the NT churches, but it was for edi­fy­ing one another, not for con­trol and domin­ion. God rebuked this doc­trine of the Nico­lai­tans that is the domin­ion of the brethren (Rev 2:6, 15). The Phar­isees estab­lished them­selves on their con­trol as an author­ity over Judaism in gen­eral, always pre­sent­ing them­selves as the experts and the author­ity for what­ever mat­ter. Jesus had to con­stantly and strongly rebuke them. God wants local church lead­er­ship, where each mem­ber weekly observes the per­sonal exam­ple so as to judge if it was bib­li­cal. Denom­i­na­tion­al­ism removes the lead­er­ship from being local. Mod­ern Phar­isees seek to rob us of our lib­erty in Christ, “reduc­ing us to slav­ery” (Gal 2:4) under their sys­tems of control.