Dear Editor,
Have you ever been asked whether you submit to or trust the elders? If you were asked to meet with the elders, would you be excited or fearful? Do you feel free to express views that are different? Are the things said in your church meeting regarded as highly confidential? Is there much real discussion or friendly debate?
Some friends have been pushed out of an independent reformed evangelical church (not one I have ever attended) and banned from Communion at any gospel church. They questioned some of the ways in which the elders were running the church and then revealed, to a few friends who asked them, the shocking way that the elders had treated them in a ‘private pastoral meeting’. Only two others in the church spoke up publicly for them.
