Local Church Autonomy and Doctrinal Deviancy

The autonomy of the local church is an essential element of Baptist ecclesiology.

Unfortunately, I sometimes hear people use the doctrine of local church autonomy to defend a church's decision to act in a manner inconsistent with Scripture.

My thinking on this issue was initially prompted by some relatively recent events among Baptists in Virginia.  In September 2012, Ginter Park Baptist Church (GPBC) in Richmond, VA ordained an openly homosexual man.  The Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV) promptly made a decision to remove GPBC from its membership if the church did not leave voluntarily by the end of 2012.  GPBC chose to stay and the BGAV removed the church from its membership.

Then in March 2013, the Richmond Baptist Association (RBA) held a vote regarding whether to sever ties with GPBC.  When the votes were tallied, GPBC was allowed to remain a part of the RBA by a small margin.  This caused many conservative leaning churches to leave the RBA.  The RBA association has since faced the daunting task of making significant budget cuts due to lost funding from the churches that left.

This has resulted in many Baptist associations in Virginia, including my own, giving consideration to the question of what they would do were they faced with the same situation.  As a result, I have been a part of a number of conversations with fellow pastors related to this issue over the last nine months or so.

The argument that I keep hearing offered by some of my moderate colleagues deals with local church autonomy.  While they personally believe that homosexuality is clearly identified in Scripture as sinful, they are unwilling to say that we should break fellowship with churches that hold a different view such as GPBC.

This is frustrating for me, to say the least.  I think this argument is based on a false understanding of local church autonomy, but my frustration is much deeper than that.  Local church autonomy is important, but it is not more important than doctrinal fidelity. 

I was motivated to think more about this issue yesterday by someone who was attending our new member's class at church.  We were talking about Baptist distinctives.  He suggested that doctrinal deviancy is one of the fears related to local church autonomy.  Who will keep the local church in check when she begins to wander from orthodoxy?

He is absolutely right.  Though I did not immediately draw a connection to the GPBC situation during our class time, I later realized that this is exactly what I have been considering for nine months.

I think what we see throughout the New Testament is that though the local church is autonomous, she is not isolated from other churches.  The local churches in the New Testament were interconnected.  The Apostle Paul, though a planter of many churches, was not a member of every local church.  That didn't seem to stop him from offering a very severe rebuke at times.  I realize that the office of apostle has ceased, but that doesn't mean the responsibility of local churches to one another ceased with it.

I am a staunch Baptist.  However, I cannot and will not allow local church autonomy to trump the clear teachings of Scripture.  If we are to continue holding to our doctrine of local church autonomy, as we should, we cannot allow that to mean that local churches are free to do whatever they please apart from confrontation, especially when it is in direct conflict with the clear teachings of Scripture. 

In my next post I will attempt to draw a connection between my understanding of local church autonomy and the church's responsibility to exercise the keys of the kingdom.