The re-emergence of heavy shepherds

What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this?

‘Are church members called to submit to / obey their elders unless they support something that clearly contradicts Scripture? The answer is yes – Hebrews 13.17 couldn’t be clearer… That means when elders eventually put forward a proposal the Christian’s conscience is bound by God himself, not because of any intrinsic authority in men but because they have been appointed (ultimately by God himself) to an office instituted by God…’

How worrying is that! Especially as evangelicalism has to come to see that spiritual abuse in churches is a fact and appears to be on the rise. Sadly, though I will not reveal its source, this letter is not a figment of my imagination. It is real. We thought heavy shepherding had died the death – but not so. Such a view of church government as expressed in the letter, of course, immediately makes the church meeting an irrelevance. Any idea of a church meeting providing ‘checks and balances’ on the use of power by the eldership is gone, because to question anything the elders promote is to oppose God.