I’m not a very good Baptist, I don’t suppose I ever was (especially since I’ve never belonged to a Baptist church, just a baptistic one.) One of the baptistic distinctives is the autonomy (under Christ) of the local church. I’m beginning to question that. In the Bible we don’t see Timothy starting his own church in Ephesis nor do we see the Ephesian church calling Timothy. We see Paul sending Timothy to them and giving him instructions. Ditto with Titus.

I believe the baptistic way of looking at this is to say that Paul was an Apostle and he had the authority to do that, we no longer have Apostles so that layer of church authority is gone. That strikes me as a convenient argument but not a compelling one. In the local church Paul told Timothy to appoint elders, not have the congregation elect them. The only time we see the congregation being involved in selecting leaders is in Acts 6 where the congregation selects deacons. But what the Apostles said was not to just go ahead and pick some leaders, but that they were to name men “whom we may put in charge of this task.”

This is the kind of stuff that bothers me. What kind of church am I going to pastor? I’m a Covenant Theologian who rejects infant baptism and a baptistic believer who believes a presbytery is a biblical idea! Man, I just wish I could follow party lines, life would be much easier. Baptists won’t take me and Presbyterians won’t either. Hey, I know, I’ll start my own denomination. Yea. That’s the ticket.