Maintaining the unity of the body of Christ requires distinguishing between preferences, conscience, and convictions. It highlights how historical changes within the Brethren movement, such as shifts in hymn books and meeting schedules, caused struggles due to a failure to differentiate these categories. The examples emphasize that true convictions are based on sound biblical interpretation and should be defended, while preferences and conscience matters require humility and consideration for others to preserve unity. The core lesson is to return to the basics of Christian faith, as defined by foundational doctrines, and to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, rather than dividing over less essential matters.
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music. The first time I came, you know, I grew up on the East Coast, and then we lived in the big city of Chicago for seventeen years, and we moved to Dubuque, and it's a little town you can drive through in fifteen minutes and be with the cows. And Atlantic's sort of like that, isn't it? And then I came to the first Atlantic Conference, and they had a women's sex set that first year. It was magnificent. I thought, where did this come from? And it's been that way every year, you know, it's the most musical part of the whole world, evidently. really quality stuff that comes every conference time and we enjoy it. I've enjoyed the special music, haven't you? It's been a good time. Sometimes, Dan, it's better than preaching sometimes, huh?
I'll tell you this. This will be my last message of the conference and we'll be leaving shortly after. This message is the one I should leave after anyhow. You'll see that. And I just would like to express my appreciation, families, for the wonderful hospitality that we've enjoyed with the Mollets and with all of you who have worked so hard to make this a good conference time together. It just doesn't happen. We realize those things take a lot of work, and we appreciate that. And it's been good to be with Brother Dan again. He's spoken to my soul.
I know that. If we got Christ straight in our lives, everything else would fall into place. We recognize that. And all the little details that I've been talking about would fall into the right perspective and we'd get along well and it would be just right. That's why heaven's going to be. But we want conformity now. And that has been the message that I've heard very clearly from our brother and we need to make those adjustments. And what I'm interested in particularly is that we do that in the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus. This morning we're looking at the relative freedom we have within the guidelines of church life, ecclesiastical freedom.
We have broad parameters to work in. We have four purposes for meeting. We have a form of government that has some broad implications to it. We have various roles to play within that whole thing. There's certain financial responsibilities that need to be taken care of. Individual gifts need to be exercised. But all of these things are within a mix, within broad guidelines that will unnecessary bring some varying opinions as to how they should be implemented. We've all noticed that already. When I went away to Amass as a student, and I went there first as a student, came back a lot of years later to teach, my life has been Amass dominated from the time I was about fifteen.
Our young people's group took all the Amass correspondence courses to start with. And I said, hey, if they're this good, it must be better being there. So my wife decided to go first. We weren't married then. But she decided to go, and then I decided to go, and I ended up going a semester before she did. But we spent three years there at a Mass, and then graduating, we were encouraged to get additional training and understanding and experience to come back to teach someday in the future, and God's good care and providence. That worked out. So from that time I was fifteen onward, my life has been very much connected with the school. But during that period of time, some interesting changes took place.
When I went away to a Mass... and ultimately finished all the schools. I came back home to an altogether different assembly. We had a different name. We used different hymn books. We had a different schedule of meetings and a different form of government. And it happened in a ten-year span. That was in the fifties. I went away from a hog. I came back to a chapel, same building, but the name changed. And I went away having sung out of a little hymn book called Little Flock.
Any of you remember that? This was really a spin-off group in a little flock, sort of like believers, hymn book. And I came back to hymns of worship and remembrance. And I went away to choice hymns, one we're using, And I came back to a red book. What's that called? I forget the name of it. That's it, yeah. Came back to a red book. I went away and there were no elders. I came back, there were elders. I went away and the schedule was Sunday school, Sunday morning, followed by breaking of bread, eleven to twelve, and a gospel meeting.
eight to nine. You remember eight to nine meetings? Okay. And I came back and breaking bread was first. And then something called Family Bible Hour. I never heard of that before. But that had come into existence. And then there was an evening transition kind of meeting. Still a little gospel, a little ministry, a little whatever you wanted to be. And didn't know quite what to call it. And it was at seven o'clock then. A lot of changes. And some of those were really tough changes. Because some people didn't want to change names. Some people didn't want to change schedules.
Some people didn't want to change hymn books. Some people didn't want any more development in the church government. And there were all sorts of struggles. And feelings got hurt. And boy, it was a big bump in assembly life. And I found out later that was happening all over the country. And we're in another one of those bumps in a family life. And what's common to both of them, they're really the same issues. That's what's strange. They're the same large issues that are involved. They're small issues, I'm not sure which. Same issues are involved, but the big issue is there's a new generation on the scene. And the old one is still here.
Look around. The old and the younger here. How do you make that transition? It's a real test. I saw him to a couple brothers, and are they here? I'd call them up on the platform and have an interview. We had a very insightful discussion. That's what's good. And the brother says to me, you know, I hadn't recognized this, but that same thing happens in business when it gets passed from father to son. Or a new management team comes in. There's a big bump. You know what happens in families. When the children are adults and they have their own families and mom and dad are just real tempted to say, look, this is the way you should be doing it.
Have you ever had any problems like that with your kids? This is the way your kids thought you're going to kill yourself. Put that plastic away, you know, kind of thing. And we know. what's right, but hey, there's a new administration in sight. When they left, they left. They promised to cleave to another person, and the two are one now, and we're just sort of passive advisors. Better be passive advisors, or we're all in trouble, right? And I think it's there in every dimension of life. How do you make the transition in all these things and still remain friends?
How do you make the transition and keep the family intact? How do you make the transition and not destroy the business? In the church, how do we make it and maintain the unity of the body of Christ? That's the big issue that's in front of us right now. And it takes wise, outlook on the part of the older generation and wise outlook and tolerant outlook on the part of the younger generation to pull it off. I gotta confess I don't see a lot of wisdom being manifested out there in the assembly world right now.
I see a lot of dumb stuff going on where a lot of people who are genuine lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ who who value the things of God, ninety-nine percent in common with one another, are looking at that one percent variation and writing all sorts of crazy letters all over the country about it, and in reality dividing the body of Christ, which I know God hates. These six things of the Lord hate, ye seven are an abomination unto him, and one of them is this, he who sowed discord among the brethren. And that's a clear statement. When Jesus Christ prays, his prayer is, to keep the fly out of my mouth, his prayer is that we might have unity, that we might be one, not that we might divide.
And I know I'm on the Lord's side, and more importantly, he's on mine. when what we are trying to do is maintain the unity of the church instead of dividing the church. That is clear. Now sometimes we can't pull it off. That's obvious. One of the things we have to realize is what are the basics? And we need to go back into our heritage to recognize how well those who were involved in the beginning of the Brethren movement understood the basics. Because they would meet together with people from different backgrounds.
They would meet with clergymen with their collars on in that strange way. And those transition days, meeting to remember the Lord together. And it didn't matter what your background was, what kind of clerical garb you wore, anything like that. The important thing, there was only one test. You know what it was? Are you a believer in Jesus Christ? That's the way we started. And that is a massive process. important concept. Back to basics is what we need, really. Here are the basics. This is what binds the body of Christ together, and it's a broader body than brethrenism. There is one body, one spirit, just as we are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith.
one baptism, one God and Father of all, and anybody who believes those things is an equal member of the body of Christ with me. These are the basics. For these we should shed our blood. The core truth of Christianity. In the early nineteen hundreds, nineteen twenties or so, there was the modernist Fundamentalist controversy, back when fundamentalism was a good word, to be replaced by a conservativeism, and I'm not sure what the incoming word will be. But fundamentalism was a good word. It stood for all those people who stood for the fundamentals of faith.
They boiled it down to five statements. Here's seven. I think seven are inspired. Five summarizes this. And it was the five that were particularly pointed in their days. Substitutionary death of Christ, inspiration of Scripture, virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. pre-millennial, pre-tribulational return of the Lord. That was a big element of faith in that particular day. One other that slips my mind at the moment. But five fundamentals. There are certain basics, very few, that bind together all of Christians. And we should make no more than that. As soon as we start saying, and this, and this, and this, We are going beyond the basics of what is seen in Scripture as those elements that bind us together.
This is the unity of the Spirit. And Paul defines it, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And these are the things that bind us together into one body. And again, that body is larger than brethrenism. It's your Baptist friend down the street. It's the assemblies of God person who in a moment of inconsistency exercised faith in God for salvation in Jesus Christ, not mixing up the works that they later bring into it. There are brothers and sisters in the Lord. It's the person who is that High Church of England, John Stott type person, who is a believer in Jesus Christ.
It crosses denominational bonds. Early brethren understood that, and we should too. These are the things that bind us together. We should die for those. Do you think there's one Lord? I'll go to the wall for that. At least I want to. If that would be the choice, deny Jesus as Lord or not, I hope I would have the grace to say I'll stand on that one. Communism and Arminianism, that's a different thing. You put a gun to my head, I'll be a two-point Calvinist or a Whiskey Calvinists or whatever you want me to be, I'll be. You tell me. I'm not going to die for that one.
I'm not going to die for five or seven or eight dispensation. I don't think you understand Scripture without dispensational approach, but you put it down to my head, I'm not dying for that. But these I will, I hope. It's the basis of Christian faith. It's what all Christians have had in common from the day of Pentecost to the future coming day of the rapture. It's a product of the working of God in our lives. It's the unity of the Spirit. We're not told to produce it. He's already done that. We're told to maintain it. And we're in a maintaining position. Look, the unity's there. Holy Spirit made it. Those people are in the body of Christ, whether we want them to be or not.
He's made that. Our job is to maintain it. Maintain it. And in the process of our groups, of the assembly movement, we're in a tough spot right now to maintain that spirit of unity. Because we're going through one of those bumps. And I think we'll come out of it. I pray God we will. I pray we come out of it without hurts. I got to say without any more hurts. Because we hurt already. Some people are bleeding over it. Now how do we handle this? comes down to some simple procedures, I think.
Preferences, conscience, items, and convictions. What is a preference? And we're talking about preference in relationship to the conducting of church life. Because these are the areas that are in debate. We're not talking about what kind of pie you want. I haven't found one. I don't like it. I'm working on it. They're all wonderful. Have you ever noticed how God's people are wonderful cooks? It's the only thing left to Christians, and they're trying to take that away from it. Preference. Preference about church life. A personal desire for the manner of conducting church life based on personality, situation in life, convenience, and individual opinion.
We have lots of preferences. has nothing to do with anything else than what I personally desire. Things of preference would fall into categories of a kind of music you like. One occasion I was laid up from playing softball at Camp Coronas up in Minnesota. I was safe at first base, but I happened to run into the first basement and broke a leg and a shoulder. Fell on the base safe. My run scored. Team one. But six months later, that didn't really mean very much to me.
During that period of time, I made up a little hymn book for a Life of Christ class that I teach in a mass. Hymns that were associated with the events of the Lord's life. It was fun to do. Just for kicks, I figured out when the authors wrote those hymns. The eighteen hundred. And then for kicks, I figured out the tune average days. And it was the seventeen hundred. Ooh, I like Baroque music. It's my favorite here. I listened to a tape coming over of trumpets playing Baroque. It was beautiful. You know, I almost missed the exit.
Blown. In fact, when I pulled in, I... met Mrs. Millett right at the entrance up here, and I said, listen to this beautiful music. Isn't this wonderful? You know, well, it's all just a hill. Most of you wouldn't care too much for that. How many of you like that kind of music? Oh, look at that. See that? We're in the middle of the conservatory of music of the United States. I should have known that, all right? Here we are. You know, it's seventeen, so I'm a man for the seventeen hundreds. Isn't that terrific? I'm a couple centuries late in coming here. That's my preference. But you know what, I make myself bend on things like that. If I had my choice, that's the kind of music I'd sing hymns to all the time.
And I'd have a little baroque group up here, you know, accompanying everything, and everybody'd go, oh, this is boring, or at least lots of people with preference. What I like personally, Go into conscience. We'll come back to these because I want you to do a little homework in the coming week. Conscience. An evaluation concerning the manner of conducting church life based on background, practice, and practice over an extended period of time.
We have conscience items in church life. These become noticeable to us when we react when there's something that has violated that conscience. Conscience items may relate to the kind of bread and drink in the elements of the Lord's Supper, or the format. of them in the passing thereof.
That we have done something for such an extended period of time that we have trained our conscience that that becomes now the right way. You see, there is a moral evaluation in the process of doing that, where we will say, that's not the right way to do it. And the best way to catch yourself is the instinct response that's hit your conscience. And your conscience says, hey, that's not right. Have you ever had that happen in a meeting? Sometimes it's when a brother will unknowingly violate an unwritten code that you probably shouldn't call out of him in between the passing of the bread and the cup.
And some of us will have a negative response if that happens. And we'll say, that's wrong. Now, as soon as we say that's wrong, we're out of the area of preference. You don't say a preference is right or wrong, do you? We understand preferences are preferences. But this one, we say, hey, that's wrong. I would prefer this kind of music, but I don't say that's wrong. We don't say that. We understand that's just personal taste. But now we do say, hey, that's wrong. You don't do that. It comes across in unwritten codes that we haven't. Everybody has unwritten codes. I'm not saying that in a negative way. of how we dress for church services. That's wrong.
And your conscience gives you a charge if you see it violated. And what has happened is we are attaching right or wrong, it's a moral evaluation that we're ascribing to that act or lack thereof, to conformity to a long-standing habitual practice. We do it so regularly, it's so much of a custom that we end up saying, hey, there's a right or wrong in this whole thing. Now, the conscience is a very tricky thing. The conscience can be trained to not respond to wrong things and can be trained to respond wrongly to right things.
The conscience is not reliable unless it is renewed by the Word of God. Everybody in the world has a conscience. We all know that we can silence that conscience, can't we? The first time you do something wrong, boy, it screams at you, morally wrong, stated by the Word of God. Second, third time, don't even hear it. And the Bible talks about a hardened conscience, a seared conscience. Conscience is not a trustworthy guide. And just because we have a reactionate, that seems wrong. My conscience is crying out, hey, somebody did something wrong here. We have to examine that to see if it really is wrong.
Now, sometimes it will be. I have to acknowledge that. This has been a good growing year in Iowa from what I understand. Is that right? Good growing year? It's been good for my house. I know that. I haven't been able to keep up with the grass. And I've also had the busiest summer as far as camp and other things. We're building a chapel and doing a number of other things, and spare time is very limited. And the grass, I got home in between camps, and the grass is like this. And I said to Melty, I got to get this grass cut. The only day I had to cut the grass was Sunday.
Anybody got a problem with that? Well, my father has a problem with that kind of thing, and he lives with it. I got a problem with the neighbors. The grass is getting shabby and I'm on the board and one of the things we're supposed to do is keep our homes kind of neat and keep the development in shape and it's a little embarrassment for me to come to board meetings with grass like this. So I got a problem in a couple of ways. I said to them, I'm going to fly it by dad. Maybe I can get it by and cut the grass there from there. So I went over and I said, how you guys do it? Don't fly. I said, boy, that grass is really growing out there. My father said, this sure is. You've got to get out there and cut. The neighbor's going to think you're going to just not take care of the place.
I said, you're right. I was thinking about doing that this afternoon. He said, it's the Lord's day. Well, that was the end of that one, you know. Done. Finish. Okay. It didn't fly. You've got to run these balloons up. Now, that's a conscience matter. preference my preference was since this was a crunch I think God understood I was banking on that but my father didn't and consequently my preference yielded to his conscience and I didn't cut the grip and that's the way preference and conscience are supposed to work my preference is not as important as your conscience and if my preference if I prefer something if my preference conflicts with your conscience, I yield on that.
Now I need to encourage you to see things from different viewpoints. I need to stimulate you to challenge your conscience and all the rest. But in the process, preference yields to conscience. That's the way it works. Because preference is not as important as conscience. And I'll read some scripture to demonstrate that a bit later. The third element is conviction. And I'm going to give an extended definition of this, and this is a tough one. Having said this in a few comments, I'll slip it out unnoticed, okay? A settled position concerning the manner of conducting church life based on sound, hermeneutical interpretations.
of every verse of Scripture dealing with that issue. That's a hard statement, I'll repeat it. Conviction is a settled position concerning the manner of conducting church life based on a sound hermeneutical interpretation of all of the passages of Scripture relating to the issue under discussion. Now you will say, what did he just say? Let me explain. Hermeneutics is the science and art of interpreting the Bible. Certain principles that are to be applied in a scientific and all that means is logical, orderly, extended way.
Whereby I take all the verses of Scripture that relate to a given subject, the one that we're discussing, whatever it may be, And I cannot have a conviction until I can consistently explain how all those verses fit together. Until I do that, all I have is an opinion. I have to have a statement that will say something like this. I've studied most of the verses, but I'm not sure how these three or four impact on it yet. I haven't been able to plug those in. And I realize I can't give a good explanation of those. I have to hold this a little bit in suspension yet.
I haven't come to a final conclusion on that subject. Does that sound like hard work? It is. It is very hard. But it's the only way we can come to a conviction legitimately. You see, God has given us A limited revelation of himself. It is not total revelation. We could never understand total revelation of God. It's limited. But it is revelation. This book is not the confusion of God. It is the revelation of God. It is an understandable book. Now some will say, but the secrets belong to God.
Yes. And he didn't write them down. They're still in heaven. Kept secrets. He's told us what he wants us to know. It's here. It's a revelation. It's understandable. This is a book that can largely be mastered. Do you hear that? It's not written to us so we can say, what in the world do you mean? It's written to us so we can say, this is what he means. Right? Do you buy that? It's a revelation. It's not a confusion he's given to us. It is utterly consistent. It is not inconsistent with itself, any place, because there is but one author.
Who is that? God. It is inerrant. It perfectly complements itself. And I must confess that I think Scripture by itself can be understood. There is enough history in Scripture to understand the historical setting so that we can understand what is being said. Now I say that because right now people are pulling the wool over our eyes and saying, if you really knew the culture of the day, you would understand this doesn't mean what it means. Well, the fact of the matter is they don't really understand the culture of the day. Do you understand how difficult it is to establish any given practice for a given moment in time?
When you go back to church history, the first three hundred years of church history have largely one source, Eusebius, is the father of church history. Anything we know about. One hundred to three hundredths because he wrote a book. Now, it was a good book, had lots of volumes. He was a good historian. But it all comes through his eyes, and I'm not sure his eyes are accurate. He was a good friend of Constantine, the Roman emperor, who declared Christianity the official religion. And he thinks Constantine was a fine Christian hero. I kind of think he was a Christian man. But other church historians will say he overlooks the following facts. He had two of his sons killed. He had one of his wives killed.
He had another relative killed. Is that good Christian practice? Generally not to be considered such. It's very hard to really accurately record history of yesterday, then alone history of two thousand years ago. Really it's hard. And I hope. that my understanding of history does not depend on the understanding of the Bible does not depend on my understanding of all the details of world history. I have a feeling, and I'm just running this way myself, I have a feeling that there's enough historical setting within the context of Scripture to have us understand what Scripture is all about.
It's not a confusion. There are more hermeneutical gymnastics being carried out now in the name of interpretation than has ever happened. We're duplicating the mystical interpretation of origin in what we're getting out of Scripture. Wonderful things in the Bible I see, things that are put there by you and by me. And that is the truth. Whole words are being redefined. And then making their interpretation in Scripture... all together contrary to what has been normal interpretation. And we need to watch it. Because we're making lots of changes based on inaccurate hermeneutics.
But we have to wrestle with those verses. And this takes time. And you're probably saying to me, yeah, I know you. You do that all week long. I understand that. I am not in your shoes on this. But we have to be able to take time to seriously study Scripture. And if there's a movement that's ever done that, it's been our movement. And we need to catch that vision again, to be a movement of the book. We used to collect libraries of good commentaries, and it was the habit of brethren to read those. That was their hobby. They couldn't wait to get to that every night.
Isn't that right? And boy, they knew the Bible. I'm not sure that's the case much anymore. A conviction can only come when we go through that. Where most of us are is that we are enforcing in our church life inherited conviction. Inherited conviction. And that's one of the reasons this changed from one generation to another is so tough. Isn't it? because the younger generation is coming up and saying, why do we do it this way? I have this idea of doing it this way.
Have any of you elders ever heard those kind of comments? Now, there's a good answer we can have. Let me turn you to First Corinthians, and I'm just, don't turn there. This is the answer. This is the reason we do it. See, First Corinthians, and you tick off all that, and that's corroborated over in First Timothy chapter two, where you have the same kind of thing, and I want to show you those points. And then, you know, we have to make that match up with these other things that we see in practice in the book of Acts in each incident as they're going along. And you know what? It gets real complicated. And when a young person comes up and says, why are we doing it that way? If we can't do that, we have one of two choices.
We can say, I'm not real sure. I don't know. That's a hard thing to say, isn't it? Especially if that hard for a person who is the leader, the church, one of the elders. When a young man, a young woman comes up, why do we do it this way to say, like I confess, I don't know. Let's all say that one. I don't know. I don't know. It's not too tough, isn't it? Three simple words, monosyllable. But it's hard to say when people really think you should know. So we can say, I don't know. Or we could say, you really shouldn't be asking that question.
We've always done it that way. And it's the defensive response. And boy, what happens when that happens. That younger man, younger woman has asked the question, said, oh, boy, there's no hope here. They're just digging in their heels. That happens all the time. Look, it's no big deal. to say, I don't know. If it's an inherited conviction we have, that's all we can honestly say. You know, that's the way we've been doing it. That's the way I grew up and that's why we're doing it this way. That's where a lot of us are now. But now the problem comes, the big changes are coming.
And we all get on the bandwagon of changes. And since we don't know what the convictions are, by having studied Scripture, we start chucking stuff that are convictions. And we're not sure we're doing that. We'll take the Lord's Supper and throw it out the window. Now, we won't quite say that, but we'll put it at a minor point in the church schedule so we're not embarrassed by that funny meaning anymore. And we've cut our throat when we do that. We don't have a reason to exist as a movement when we take away the Christocentric aspect of assembly life that we gather together around the Lord. That's our strength. And if we destroy that, we're at the jugular.
We're dead in the water. When we take that away, we're a weaker church than the Bible church on the corner. I guarantee it. That's the only thing that keeps us straight. And I want to tell you, I am convinced the Lord's Supper keeps us straight. We have a living illustration every Sunday morning of all the vital doctrines of the Christian faith. It's a fringe benefit. We remember deity humanity in Jesus Christ, the role of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the substitutionary death of the Lord, the inerrancy of Scripture because it says it's true, and the working of the Holy Spirit and conviction and the necessity of new birth and the Lord's coming again.
It's all there every Sunday, isn't it? And it's there as different men. Ordinary men, not clergy men, but ordinary men, stand up and testify to the saving grace as they worship God. They don't even know that they're teaching the whole congregation the basic elements of Christianity. That's why in the assembly movement, it is amazing. We are virtually heresy free. And it's not because they're so blooming educated. There are only a few of us like that, right there, way beyond their ears. Yeah? It's because we gather together week after week and everything is rehearsed in a chalk talk sort of way that it's real simple for us all to understand.
There it all is. Your salvation demands the death of Jesus Christ. It's real simple. It's there. And the lessons of body life are all there. We're all participating and we do it together. and we're stimulated by one another and it's all flowing and consequently you go around assembly life you don't hear heresy I hear it in every other area we play games with that and some do we don't realize we're playing game with the heart and soul of church life because it's not a conviction or if it is it's an inherited conviction we've not really gone through it ourselves and understood the importance of it.
Inherited convictions won't cut it. And when the bump comes and when we're challenged, if it's an inheriting conviction, we respond defensively normally. If I can turn to Scripture and give a reasonable explanation or even come to a point, and there's some things that we do that I have to say, and I'll have the last word in this, this is a tough chapter. And I say two or three options. And the last word hasn't been written. I have to say that. There are some tough things. I have to come at it that way. By the time I have come to the age that I have and have studied and taught for so many years, I guess I say some things more bluntly than I did at once.
I really get a little upset when somebody who has never read the Bible through, can't even give you the books of the Bible in order, has not once read God's revelation, has never really put his mind to the task for an hour, comes up and says, I think you're wrong. I feel like saying, go fly a kite. Now that seems real harsh on this thing. And with a gentle, with a young person, I don't feel that way. But if somebody that should by now be a teacher who doesn't know up from down about Scripture, they have no right to a conviction. They have opinion.
And that's all. If you can't show me here it is, we have no right to stand on it. Isn't that right? If I can't say thus say it's a Scripture, And we've been marked by that as a movement, and I'm crying out that we need to get back to that. And understand what the real elements are as the early brethren did. Here are the things that bind us together. They are my convictions, and I'm not backing off on that. I'm not backing off on the oneness of the body of Christ. And the other elements that are spelled out in Ephesians four, We need to be convicted of those.
These are convictions we will not yield or in conviction. But the problem is we as brethren have a tendency to slide everything into the conviction side of things. I asked some folk in a conference I went to, and this is the assignment I want to leave with you, to list five things of church life that are preferences. Five things of church life that are conscience items. Five things of church life that are conviction items. Everybody had trouble with the first two columns. They couldn't think of anything that wasn't a conviction column.
The way we dress was a conviction. The kind of music is a conviction. The order of the services is a conviction. The schedule is a conviction. There are not things to be convicted over, folks. And what this turns down to is, hey, I have to take those individuals that God has made and all the gifts that God has given to them and the personality that he's worked with. And I have to recognize that we've been set free from sin so that we can interact in three ways within the church. and consequently every local assembly should have a different faith.
We believe in the autonomy of the local church and everyone should be adapted to