Was at an interesting discussion the other day. The context was that anew 'youth' group was trying to start up. One of the issues that thegroup had to think about was what their pastor would say about such agroup. There was no official representation from the church in thegroup to govern issues such as doctrine.So it was feared that the pastor may object to the group. The pastor,from a independent church, must have spent tons of energy building uphis church. Any group that forms of its own probably was a potentialquestion mark to the church. Besides such groups have been led astrayso he was justified to a good extent.His offficial stand was supposed to be ' let the church have a higherpriority than any group '.

The members of the group feared that theycould not agree with such a stance as they wanted their freedom tochoose where they belonged to.What was also very interesting is that the group members came fromdifferent church backgrounds and had been influenced by missionorganisations which are inter-denominational in nature.Church history is replete with issues of such nature - early churchsplit into 3 major divisions atleast because of the power strugglebetween rome and other places. Even in the bible Peter and Paul had tostruggle with it.

The origin of 'missions' clearly shows how medieval church could notaccomodate the vision of all its members and hence capable peoplestarted off on their own establishing successful missions.I have had experiences with mission groups who had asked me to choosebetween church and mission work. The same could be extended to giving- to the churches or missions. While several middle positions existfor resolving the issue , plenty of bible verses are quoted by bothsides and unlike medieval times the bishop or pastor cannotexterminate people so easily anymore, it will be interesting tounderstand the stance on the issue from different angles.Herbert Roy