How Independent are IFB churches

That's a powder keg with a lit match laying inches from the tip of the fuse.

Don't think I want to comment either, but thanks for the heads up, Salty.

 

I'm not understanding the point of the article. It's just an attack piece on IFBers.

Also, it's kind of contradictory and senseless at times.
Excerpt:
IFB churches and pastors trumpet their independent nature. (and as history has clearly shown this independence has resulted in horrible abuse and scandal) But, despite of their claim of independence, IFB churches and pastors are quite denominational and territorial. They tend to group together in their various camps, only supporting churches, colleges, pastors, evangelists, and missionaries, that are in their respective camp.

OK, the author claims that IFB churches are denominational and territorial. Well, yeah, their denomination is BAPTIST and if they ONLY support certain colleges, pastors, and missionaries, isn't that by definition INDEPENDENT???!

 

As someone else stated, I don't think I'd really like to comment deeply on this one except to say I saw nothing helpful, just critical in analysis. IFB churches have done both good and evil, but, so has every other religion from the beginning of the world.
The only thing that matters is what has been done FOR Christ in all honestly....Guess I said more than I wanted...LOL

 

Birds of a feather always tend to flock together - that is normal and natural if not scriptural as well.

However, his lack of experience in one area is obvious. Historically there are truly independent Baptist churches that did not join the Southern Baptist Covention in 1844-45. Unlike IFB, BBF and ABA, NABA, GARBC, and other formal coventional/associational Baptists they never came out of any formal Convention/associational Baptists because they were never part of any such groups until this day.

However, it is true that these churches that never came out of such formal conventions/associations had, and have informal loose fellowship ties with other churches of like faith and order. They voluntarily worked together to support missionaires and Bible colleges. Most of these colleges were supported by a few local congregations in a voluntary cooperative effort.

Another issue that I have with the IFB and this particular writer is that he judges God's blessings by a numerical basis. If that is true then we all should be Catholics or Southern Baptists as they are more numerous than others. Modern evangelical methods, pressurized sales technics can produce numbers galore but mean absolutely nothing. Indeed, if one examines those number emphasis type churches and denominations it will also be seen over a given period of time more apostasy can be found among them as well, as they are simply repeating the Roman Catholic addition of lost professors within their roles which ultimately is manifested in apostasy, and division especially among "independents" who do not have a Catholic heirarchy to control it.

 

Correction, I did not mean to imply that pre-1844 Baptists were not involved in associations. I only meant to say that not all pre-1844 Baptists became part of board controlled/operated conventions. For example, the Baptist churches that I come from never entered into the 1844-45 Southern Baptist Convention or any other type of convention. In contrast, ABA and IFB and BBF, etc. came out of such. Some of the churches I identify with entered into the SBC but came out of it as without joining some other board operated association.