Friday, June 17, 2005

Roy Hill's prophecy....death by 2025

Let me just ask a simple question. How is your assembly doing? Honestly. Let's forget about all the silly arguments about wether or not your assembly is doing things the "right" way (and by who's standard?). Wouldn't you agree that growth is a New Testament principle? If so, then what in the world is going on? I have just recently finished reading one of the most hard-hitting evaluations of the brethren assemblies by one of it's biggest proponents, Roy Hill!

The full text of the report is on the discussion forum - here - , but let me just quote the most startling prediction of Hill's:
in the last few years assemblies have been 'closing' at the rate of about one per week, and the numbers in some of those remaining are very few indeed...

..should this current trend continue unchecked assembly testimony in some parts of the British Isles could disappear altogether by 2025 about 200 years after it begun!
Let us now face this problem head on, and not be naive in thinking that we are in a better situation in Canada. What are we going to do? Let us also not recoil into smugness by thinking that we are doing things "God's way". Can we at least begin to revisit our convictions, simply to see if they have real biblical backing? Will we stubbornly take the assebmlies to their death because we were unwilling to be flexible and biblical? If this report by Roy Hill will not shake us, then what will? Perhaps the lampstand has already been taken away in many places.

I will finish with Hill's closing remarks:
Let us not stand accused that in our day and generation we lost, through carelessness, that which was passed on to us through our refusal to recognize and address a problem that is now staring us in the face...There is yet time, but perhaps not much for the recovery and progress of assembly work
Do you think it's too late? Is there still hope? The discussion forum is open

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