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I was watching a video of a well-known Adventist preacher and they were having a question-answer session. One lady stood up and started her question with, "Pastor, in our church we have no pastor at present." His response was, "Oh, lucky you!" I tend to agree with him. It seems that, especially in small churches, a pastor is a hindrance to the church in more ways than one. And this is especially true now that conferences are trying "to take churches in a different direction." With a pastor, it is too easy for the members to stand back and let the pastor do the work of evangelization. And some pastors even want to micromanage the whole process like they are the only ones capable of giving Bible studies. I was talking to one pastor of a small church and he told me he was giving nine bible studies! And no one in the church was giving any. I could only ask why he was doing that. Sometimes the pastor becomes the gatekeeper for contacts from other ministries such as VOP. Russell Burrell wrote a number of books on the life cycles of church. In one book he related how a small company, without a pastor and did not want a pastor, was growing. In order for someone to become a member of this church the prospective member needed to state what their mission would be. (Can't just sit there and warm the pew? Where's the love?) My own personal study has led me to conclude that your eternal life is in peril if you are not involved in evangelization. Those are the ones Jesus will say "I don't know you" to. If you cannot see that the thing that Jesus cared for the most (saving souls), then you don't know Him. One of the problems for a newly planted church is that to have a pastor paid by the denomination, the group must sign over the church property to the conference. So, the local company no longer even owns their own building anymore. This is all fine, except when a church group decides for good or bad to depart from "official" conference guidelines, then the conference comes along and padlocks the doors and the company is without a church. So, I hate to say it, but a new church body has to be circumspect when dealing with their conference. I hate like anything to even have to write something like this, but it is what it is. Your new company is also going to have name problems, because they could be prohibited from calling themselves a Seventh-day Adventist church. Membership could have its own issues. And lastly, the church is going to have to decide what they will do with funds raised thru offerings and tithes. In some conferences there would be little concern about sending funds to the conference, but in others, I would have a problem paying tithe to the conference and would seriously look for another conference to send my tithes and offerings to.

We could have this same discussion about Christmas in December if we wanted to. The season in which Christians observe Resurrection Day, pagans observe as the spring equinox and Jews celebrate as Passover. The season Christians celebrate as Christmas, pagans celebrate the winter solstice, Jews celebrate as Hanukkah. I'm approaching my 68th birthday. I'm not all that concerned if we choose to celebrate that day on the exact date of my birthday or not. In the current dispensation - since we don't really "know" the exact date of some feasts - is God more concerned about the exact dates on which we keep the feasts, or the fact that we recognize and celebrate them in the proper season? Using Passover as an example, Israelites who were unclean or otherwise unable to celebrate Passover in the 14th of the first month could celebrate it in the 14th day of the second month. I believe God wanted them to "remember" more than make sure they did it on the exact day of the anniversary of their flight. I'm not including the weekly Sabbath in this proposition. To my knowledge, the weekly cycle of 7 days has never been altered. When they switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, they only changed the date - not the day of the week. It's the same with almost all calendars of the world. We may not agree on the Month, date, and year; but we all agree on whether it's Monday or Tuesday (taking into account the international dateline, of course).

Richard, may I ask which passages of Scripture you used to test that statement from your favorite author?