The Undivided Church and Authority - Congregationalism

When you detect heresy, who do you blame?  The people, or the leaders, or both?

Congregationalists, i.e. American churches such as most Baptist churches, have a serious problem: each congregation either works from complete autonomy, or else is a slave to a governing body. You either cook up your own heresy, or else you swallow some remote authority's pronouncements. Yes, I'm including the Southern Baptist Convention in this, because they make pronouncements that they expect churches to fall in line over, and play power politics just like our Congress.

As Americans, we believe that individual rights are supreme. Yet this is not how a Christian should look at himself, nor his local church. We are all part of the invisible church, and body of Christ, each a building block that makes up the temple of God, corporately the kingdom of God. We are accountable to Christ and to one another.

Not that congregational polity is in error. We have plenty of examples of what happens when a non-accountable church government is established. Rome. Antioch. Canterbury. Geneva. The Synod. The General Assembly. And yet, congregations do not operate in isolation from one another. Why do they act as if they do?

Perhaps it has to do with fear. Fear of wasting time, working through doctrine, sharing power with other pastors, fear of compromising The Faith, fear of losing that rugged, God-given freedom from being accountable to each other of Christ. Fear that our differences are not resolvable. And blinders over our eyes that our traditions are often the traditions of men, and not Christ.

At the end of the day, it is the local congregation's responsibility to be accountable to each other and to neighbor congregations, regardless of denomination, and regardless of what sort of power structure you've been placed into by humans. Are you part of the bride of Christ or not?  And just as important: aren't your sister churches part of the bride of Christ, or not?