Tucked away in a stack of material “to be read later,” I came across a fascinating tract first published in 1953. It is a collection of articles appearing in the Gospel Advocate that same year by Earl Irven West, noted author and historian of the Restoration Movement. They bear the title, “Congregational Cooperation, A Historical Study.”

West carefully documents the thinking of Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell on the subject of local churches organizing themselves into functioning bodies for the purpose of doing the work of the “church universal.” He then traces how such thinking evolved over the next several generations. It’s quite enlightening.

Historically, brethren have generally adopted one of three methods of cooperation:

                1) Cooperation meetings on state and district levels, in which delegates of various congregations met together, elected officers, selected a traveling evangelist and accepted pledges for his financial support. The was the method advanced by Alexander Campbell, even though he acknowledged no biblical pattern for such action, and which led to the founding of the American Christian Missionary Society in 1849.

                2) State meetings, in which a local church was selected to accept funds from other churches and oversee the evangelist sent into the field. The local church selected served “as a receiving, managing, and disbursing evangelizing committee.” Again, there is no biblical pattern for this arrangement. The plan soon evolved into the Texas State Missionary Society, formed in 1886.

                3) A type of cooperation without any organization outside the local church, itself, in which local churches cooperate in God’s plans by simply doing their own work as God ordained. This concept was advocated by men such as Tolbert Fanning, who founded the Gospel Advocate in 1855, and David Lipscomb, who served as its editor for 50 years. It’s sad to note that the Advocate today has taken the lead in promoting the very type of cooperative “brotherhood projects” it was founded to refute.

The whole issue of congregational cooperation sprang from the errant idea that the combination of all local churches constitutes the church universal. This was taught by Campbell and generally accepted without question for many years. It is still embraced by many bro-thers today.

One question that seems rarely to have been explored is this: why should local churches function together in cooperative efforts? The assumption of Campbell and others was that such arrangements are necessary in order for the church universal to fulfill its duties. But no one has ever shown from scripture that the church universal has any collective duties to discharge!! Campbell felt at liberty to create whatever organization seemed most efficient, not seeming to realize that if God had wanted a collective organization of local churches, He would have said so. This error has caused nothing but trouble for the past 170 years.

My plan is to begin a series of lessons on the subject of Bible authority, coupled with an overview of several serious misconceptions growing out of the 19th century Restoration Movement. I’m planning to start the series on Sunday nights in March. It’s vital for Christians in every generation to understand common sense principles for interpreting and applying God’s word. And it’s important to understand the simplicity of Christianity as taught in scripture.        

 - Steve Dewhirst