You Let WHO Teach?

Usually, I rant against dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists who rigidly hold to practices they cannot biblically defend--but today, it's the liberals who'll try anything that have me particularly rankled.

I read with some skepticism an article by the Religious Herald Managing Editor, Robert Dilday, titled "Churches try varied ways to approach question of membership and baptism." While I've pondered for some time the biblical link between membership and baptism, this article and others it was nestled amongst seemed to herald a new trend among liberal churches to open up the membership rolls to anybody, whether immersed, sprinkled as adults, sprinkled as babies, or nary a baptism at all. Yes, I too have withstood grumblings from church attendees who might consider membership, but say, "I don't want to be baptized again!" It's really no surprise that compromising churches of our day would cave to this pressure and permit sprinkled Christians to become members. What shocked me, however, was Dilday's quote of Williams Trace Baptist's pastor Phil Lineberger. He says, "We allow them [unbelievers] to become part of our fellowship and we'll watch over them, whether or not they ever become a Christan or a Baptist." Oh, but that's not all Lineberger said! He actually boasted, "One watchcare member--a Jewish man whose wife is Christian--is a teacher in the church's college Sunday School class, where his grasp of the Old Testament and fluency in Hebrew make him a 'rich resource.'" What? I know he's trying to sweeten the attractiveness of the gospel, but hasn't this pastor in Sugar Land, Texas read what Jesus said about teachers? Something about the blind leading the blind, perhaps? (Matthew 15:14, Luke 6:39). And Jesus also said about students, "A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher." (Luke 6:40 NASB) What are we trying to turn our young adults into--unregenerate Pharasees with all the knowledge of the law but having no knowledge of the living savior?