A Baptist minister is accountable to his/her congregation, they can vote him/her out for reasons both good and bad. Additionally, if a Baptist minister lives in a way that is unworthy of being a pastoral leader, and/or teaches unorthodox and unbiblical doctrine, the church that ordained him/her can revoke that stamp of approval. Similar checks and balances exist in Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, and Orthodox (to name a few) traditions, they just flow more/less from the top-down instead of the Baptist's bottom-up. Either way, we have a system of accountability, something that in theory will adhere to the Apostle Paul's lengthy and detailed requirements to be a deacon or elder. Does the accountability of church authority work all the time? Of course not, human sin has hampered it time and time again, but that accountability does exist, and that matters.
Which brings us to the current controversy here in Venango County revolving around the Torah Clubs (and their parent organization, the First Fruits of Zion). As the Franklin Christian Ministerium's letter (link below) has pointed out, and backed-up with page after page of documentation, the teachings of this movement are clearly and repeatedly NOT apostolic, biblical, or orthodox.
The answer from the local leadership of these organizations to the ministerium's effort could have been, "My God, we had no notion that the ideas we were promoting were so dangerous." Or some such evidence of having heard the call to repentance, of heeding the collective wisdom of this town's pastoral leadership. Instead, thus far, it seems our effort has had little effect. We continue to pray that this will change, but the whole point of the theology of First Fruits of Zion is that orthodoxy, what the Church has taught and lived for the past two thousand years, is gravely wrong. If leaving orthodoxy behind has no stigma, but rather is seen as a sign of God's blessing, how can an appeal to it be effective? If Church History is supposedly one big mistake, why would anyone care that they're following a movement that mocks our ancestors in the faith?
Which is where education, training, experience, and accountability come into the picture.
James 3:1 New International Version
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
As someone who felt the call to ministry, and responded with years of formal training and then sought a position of accountable leadership, this verse has always spoken to me powerfully. What we, the men and women called to lead the Church, have done is take no small risk. By daring to be teachers of the Word of God, we invite the judgement of God upon ourselves should we fail to teach it aright. I typically teach at least 2 1/2 hours of new material each week between my sermon and bible studies, all of it opening myself up to rebuke from God should I lead people astray; that's a weight on my shoulders, one I need to bear with humility and perseverance.
We have a significant shortage of trained and willing clergy in America today. That's no secret, and it affects virtually every denomination, especially as Boomer pastors retire in droves with smaller succeeding generations behind them. As the GPS (Geographic Pastoral Servant) for the NW of the American Baptist Churches of Pennsylvania and Delaware, one of my obligations is to help churches conduct pastoral searches (in the Baptist tradition local churches bear this responsibility, nobody is 'sent' to the church by a higher ecclesiastical authority). Churches, especially small rural ones, are having significant difficulty finding someone willing to serve their congregations. The solutions, while they need to be varied and flexible, must NOT include placing people in positions of leadership who fail to meet the standards Paul set forth of character, experience, and knowledge. In other words, untrained clergy are not the answer to anybody's problem, they would only make it worse.
1 Timothy 1:6-7 New International Version
6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
The danger of teaching theology without church accountability has been made manifest in our midst as a Christian community. When an outside organization, in this case the Torah Clubs (FFOZ) promotes unorthodox beliefs, and presents it as simply a 'bible study', who checks to see if what they are teaching is in fact biblical? I am a firm believer in para-church ministry. I've founded one (Mustard Seed Missions), helped found another (Emmaus Haven), and our church has consistently supported numerous such efforts including Youth for Christ and Child Evangelism Fellowship. But, and this is key, these organizations are built upon orthodox teaching, they've never given us, as a ministerium, pause to have them operating in conjunction with our churches, they've never given us reason to worry about what is being taught.
When it comes to the Torah Club material, I have now read hundreds of pages of it. On the surface, it appears to be a well produced set of materials, kudos to their publishing house, I'd be happy for them if what they were producing wasn't so dangerous. It is possible to read a page or two of this material and get nothing more than what you would find in a typical biblical commentary on the text at hand, the kind of thing that I have on my shelf here in my office. And then there's that one sentence, the one that hints at Modalism, or that other sentence, the one that paraphrases a NT quote by putting Torah in the place of the Greek term for law or commandment leading to a novel interpretation, or that other one, the one that claims that the good works that God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10) is the keeping of Torah! A typical bible study this is not.
For an ordinary lay person, someone who has attended church for years but not undergone any rigorous theological training, the subtle distortions of theology coming from FFOZ in the Torah Club material might go unnoticed. No doubt most of those participating here locally think they're just reading a serious bible study and have no idea that this organization is attempting to recreate the Church into a Torah observant community, that what they're consuming is an indictment of not only their church pastor but the very teaching and preaching of the Gospel as we know it.
There's a reason why God chooses the sheep and shepherd analogy to talk about the church, not because those of us called to serve are any better than the laity, but because we've been given the tools and the authority to fight back against the wolves when they attack the flock.
There's a reason why the Church needs an educated and accountable clergy, what the Franklin Christian Ministerium has chosen to do by confronting the Torah Clubs is exhibit A.
"Who do you think you are! What gives you the right to call this heresy!!" If that thought has been expressed of late the answer is simple. We are the men and women accountable to God for leading his church, and we've taken oaths to protect and defend not only the people of God, but the Gospel that showed them God's redemption in Christ Jesus.
The Franklin Christian Miniserium's warning against the Torah Clubs and the First Fruits of Zion
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