By Anonymous
Milltown was my home convention, and I had every intention of going this year and giving my testimony. I was inspired by David Alink’s Ray Hoffman video. [https://youtu.be/LV2mJqUgHIs]
I was going to wear some Meta glasses. I worked a long time on this and truly feel I was guided by the Holy Spirit and called by Jesus to witness his love and grace and Milltown. Here is what I would have said:
Friends, I have been thinking much lately about the ministry, and particularly about whether the ministry as we have known it is actually scriptural. I realize even saying that will trouble some, because we have always been taught that the ministry is scriptural, and certainly many Scriptures have been used to demonstrate that it is. But the use of Scripture to demonstrate that something is scriptural does not necessarily make that thing scriptural, because Scripture itself warns us that Scripture can be wrested, which means, of course, that one must use Scripture scripturally rather than merely using Scripture.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
Jesus sent them out two by two.
Nobody disputes this.
But we have to ask what “two by two” means.
Does it mean two? Clearly.
Does it mean by two? Obviously.
But does it mean a permanent ecclesiastical structure consisting of unmarried itinerant preachers assigned geographically under the authority of senior overseers, supported by private donations, rotating annually through fields, holding gospel meetings in rented halls, and gathering several times each summer on privately owned convention grounds?
The text does not say.
And where Scripture is silent, we must be very cautious about speaking loudly.
Some will immediately say, “But Jesus said, ‘Go.’”
Yes.
He did.
But Jesus also said, “Come.”
This is important.
Christianity therefore contains both going and coming, and any ministry built entirely around going without an equally serious theology of coming has perhaps emphasized only one half of the command.
Furthermore, Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world.”
Yet workers are assigned to fields.
A field is not the whole world.
Therefore we must ask whether a worker assigned to Northern California, for example, is actually obeying the command to go into all the world if he never goes to Nebraska. I am not saying he must go to Nebraska. I am simply saying the Scripture says “all.”
We cannot ignore words merely because they are inconvenient.
Then there is the question of homelessness.
We have often heard that Jesus had nowhere to lay his head.
This is true.
But Jesus also slept in houses.
The fact that a person has nowhere to lay his head does not mean that he never lays his head anywhere. Indeed, if Jesus literally had nowhere to lay his head, sleep itself would have been impossible unless he slept standing up, for which there is no scriptural evidence.
So clearly “nowhere to lay his head” must mean something deeper than the mere absence of property ownership.
This leads naturally to the question of convention.
I have searched the New Testament carefully and have been unable to find a single convention.
There are gatherings.
There are multitudes.
There are upper rooms.
There are synagogues.
There are houses.
There is even one gathering in which a young man fell asleep during a very long sermon and fell out a window, which frankly may be the closest scriptural parallel to convention we have.
But there are no convention sheds.
No dining tents.
No sleeping quarters.
No lists assigning people to vegetable preparation.
No instructions concerning where to park.
No afternoon meeting at 3:00.
No hymn before breakfast.
Nothing whatsoever about whether one may quietly leave the grounds Tuesday evening or whether doing so indicates a troubling lack of spiritual appetite.
Someone will say, “But they gathered together.”
Of course they did.
People gather everywhere.
Baseball games are gatherings.
This does not make baseball scriptural.
Nor does the absence of baseball from the Bible necessarily make baseball unscriptural, which demonstrates the danger of arguing from silence, unless, of course, the silence concerns something we already believe to be unscriptural, in which case the silence becomes considerably more significant.
We have to be consistent about these things.
Acts tells us that the believers had all things common.
At convention, however, people bring their own pillows.
I do not say this critically.
I have brought my own pillow.
But if we are going to claim Acts as the pattern, we cannot stop at the parts of Acts that resemble our practice while quietly retaining private ownership of pillows.
That is picking and choosing.
Then there is the matter of tents.
Paul was a tentmaker.
This is often overlooked at convention, where there are many tents, but very few tentmakers.
One would think that if Paul’s example were seriously followed, the workers would arrive several weeks early and manufacture the tents themselves.
Instead the tents already exist.
Who made them?
Usually someone with a job.
This raises an uncomfortable question about who is actually following Paul’s example more closely: the worker who lives without employment, or the professing man who works Monday through Friday and owns a socket set.
Again, I am not drawing conclusions.
I am simply asking questions.
Paul worked with his hands.
Peter fished.
Luke was a physician.
Matthew had worked in taxation.
Jesus himself was known as a carpenter.
Yet somewhere along the way we developed the idea that secular employment was inconsistent with the highest form of Christian ministry.
Where is the verse?
I have looked.
Perhaps someone can show it to me.
People sometimes point to the disciples leaving their nets.
But if leaving nets establishes the permanent model for ministry, then surely possession of nets should first be required.
You cannot leave a net you never owned.
This may sound technical, but doctrine is frequently found in details.
The twelve also traveled without purse or scrip.
Yet workers today travel with wallets.
Again, I am not criticizing wallets.
They are useful.
But once we allow a wallet, we have admitted that some elements of the original sending were situational rather than permanently binding.
And once we admit that, everything must be examined again.
Why is the purse situational but the pair permanent?
Why is the sandal situational but homelessness permanent?
Why is going specifically to the lost sheep of Israel situational but two-by-two universal?
Why is carrying no money situational but carrying no spouse doctrinal?
These are not small questions.
Actually they may be small questions.
But sometimes small questions reveal large answers, and sometimes large questions reveal small answers, which is why we must avoid measuring truth by the apparent size of the question.
Consider also the seventy.
They were sent two and two.
Seventy divided by two is thirty-five.
Thirty-five is an interesting number because it is five times seven.
Seven, of course, appears repeatedly in Scripture.
There were seven days of creation.
Seven churches in Revelation.
Seven seals.
Seven trumpets.
Naaman dipped seven times.
This does not prove anything about the ministry, but neither should it be dismissed too quickly.
Sometimes numbers matter.
Other times they don’t.
Discernment is knowing when.
Then there is the matter of marriage.
Peter had a mother-in-law.
You cannot have a mother-in-law without a wife unless some very unusual family arrangement existed that Scripture does not record.
Therefore Peter was married.
Peter was also an apostle.
Thus marriage and apostleship are plainly compatible.
Some will answer that workers are not apostles.
That is fair.
But if workers are not apostles, we should probably stop using apostolic passages to prove the worker ministry.
We cannot have Peter as our example when he leaves his nets but declare him irrelevant when his mother-in-law appears.
Peter comes as a whole Peter.
The same Peter who said, “Silver and gold have I none,” apparently had access to a house containing a mother-in-law.
This complicates things.
It does not destroy faith.
Truth should never fear complication.
Paul speaks of traveling with a believing wife, as did other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas.
Some have argued that this means something other than what it appears to mean.
Perhaps.
Many Scriptures apparently mean something other than what they appear to mean.
This is why Bible study takes so long.
But at some point, if every verse that contradicts our practice requires explanation while every verse resembling our practice requires none, we should ask whether we are interpreting Scripture through the ministry rather than interpreting the ministry through Scripture.
That sentence sounded important when I wrote it down.
I believe it still is.
Now consider convention again.
We call it convention.
The word “convention” does not appear in the Bible.
Neither does “overseer” in precisely the sense we use it, although “overseer” certainly appears, which actually makes the matter more complicated rather than less complicated because a biblical word can sometimes give an unbiblical institution a biblical appearance.
Pharisee is also a biblical word.
So is Caesar.
So is locust.
We cannot simply point to a word in Scripture and assume everything currently bearing that name possesses apostolic authority.
The question is function.
But function itself must be understood according to form, unless form is incidental, in which case function takes precedence over form, except when the form is two-by-two, which we have generally regarded as essential.
Why?
Tradition.
But we do not call it tradition.
We call it the way.
Jesus said, “I am the way.”
Notice he did not say, “The ministry is the way.”
This seems elementary, yet the distinction has enormous consequences.
If Jesus is the Way, then the Way cannot simultaneously be an organizational arrangement unless the organizational arrangement is Jesus, which nobody claims.
Therefore when someone says they have “left the Way,” what exactly have they left?
If they have left Jesus, that is one matter.
If they have stopped attending a Wednesday evening meeting at 7:30 in someone’s living room, that is another.
The two should not be confused.
Jesus existed before Wednesday evening.
This is beyond dispute.
The early church also broke bread from house to house.
We have taken great confidence from the house.
But what about “to house”?
They moved.
Our meetings generally remain in one home for a year.
The apostolic church appears to have been considerably more mobile.
If we really wished to restore the New Testament pattern, perhaps Wednesday meeting should begin at one house and progressively move through the neighborhood during the course of the hour.
I am not recommending this.
Parking would become difficult.
I mention it only to show how selective literalism becomes absurd when carried consistently to its conclusion.
And perhaps that is the point.
The New Testament was never intended as a detailed operations manual specifying how many gospel workers should live in Oregon.
It points us to Christ.
That should be enough.
Yet strangely, when Christ is enough, we seem to require an astonishing number of additional arrangements to preserve the simplicity of Christ.
Workers lists.
Fields.
Staffs.
Overseers.
Special meetings.
Conventions.
Gospel meetings.
Meeting lists.
Preparations.
Expectations.
Traditions.
Unwritten rules.
And occasionally written rules explaining the unwritten rules.
One begins to wonder whether simplicity might be considerably more complicated than we were led to believe.
I remember hearing that there is no headquarters.
This was always offered as evidence that the ministry could not be an organization.
Yet decisions somehow get made.
People are assigned.
Workers move.
Conventions have dates.
Properties are maintained.
Money changes hands.
Letters appear.
Someone knows which worker is going where.
If there truly is no organization, it may be the most remarkably well-organized absence of organization in modern Christianity.
Again, I say this with affection.
I loved convention.
I loved the meals.
I loved seeing people.
I loved the grounds.
There is something beautiful about sitting under the trees after supper while someone rings a bell telling you that you are about to spend another two hours sitting somewhere else.
But affection cannot establish doctrine.
If it could, I could establish the scriptural authority of pie.
And I would have a strong case.
Jesus fed people.
Convention feeds people.
But similarity is not identity.
This is perhaps what I am trying to say about the ministry.
Jesus sent people.
We send people.
Jesus sent them two by two.
We send them two by two.
Jesus preached.
They preach.
Therefore the structures appear similar.
But two things can resemble one another without being the same thing.
A photograph of a sheep is not a sheep.
It has all the visible characteristics of a sheep but produces no wool.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
A photograph has no fruit either.
This analogy may have gotten away from me.
Still, the point remains.
I think.
We were taught that the ministry proved the fellowship and the fellowship proved the ministry.
The workers demonstrated that the church was right because they followed Matthew 10, while the church demonstrated that the workers were right because it was produced by the workers who followed Matthew 10.
This is wonderfully circular.
A circle, of course, has no beginning and no end.
God is also described as without beginning or end.
But this does not make circular reasoning divine.
One must be careful with metaphors.
Eventually I reached a very simple conclusion.
If the ministry is truly scriptural, it does not need us to pretend verses say things they do not say.
If conventions are scriptural, we should be able to demonstrate conventions from Scripture without first defining every vaguely similar gathering as a convention.
If celibacy is scriptural, Scripture should say so.
If homelessness is required, Scripture should say so.
If permanent pairs are required, Scripture should say so.
If overseers assigning workers geographically are required, Scripture should say so.
If annual conventions are required, Scripture should say so.
And if Scripture does not say these things, perhaps we should be humble enough to admit that they are traditions.
Tradition is not necessarily evil.
Chairs are a tradition.
There were probably no folding chairs in the upper room.
I have never heard anyone suggest we sit on the floor because chairs are unscriptural.
Bathrooms at convention are also unscriptural in the strictest sense.
I remain strongly in favor of them.
So this is not an argument that everything absent from Scripture must be removed.
It is almost the opposite.
It is an argument that we should stop pretending every custom we inherited was personally designed by Jesus in Galilee.
Maybe workers can go two by two.
Maybe they can go alone.
Maybe they can marry.
Maybe they can own a house.
Maybe Christians can meet in homes.
Maybe they can meet in churches.
Maybe they can have conventions.
Maybe they can have potlucks.
Maybe they can even have PowerPoint, although there I admit my faith becomes weaker.
None of those things saves anybody.
That is the part I somehow missed for years.
Christ is not validated by the ministry.
Christ does not become more true because two men arrive at your house with suitcases.
The resurrection does not depend upon whether someone owns property.
Grace does not require a convention shed.
And salvation does not hinge upon whether there is a workers list taped inside the cupboard door beside the telephone numbers and an old calendar from 2007 that nobody has thrown away.
Perhaps the most unscriptural thing about the 2×2 ministry is not that it goes two by two.
It is believing that going two by two proves anything at all.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses go two by two.
Mormons frequently go two by two.
Police officers sometimes go two by two.
No one has yet proposed that the highway patrol is the continuation of the apostolic ministry, although I suppose Romans 13 could be brought into the discussion.
And that is really all I wanted to share.
Except it isn’t all.
Because once we understand that the form does not prove the spirit, we have to ask what does.
And Scripture tells us.
Fruit.
But fruit takes time.
Trees produce fruit.
Workers preach under trees at convention.
This may seem coincidental.
It probably is.
Still, Jesus frequently taught using agricultural imagery, and convention grounds are often agricultural properties.
I don’t know exactly what to make of that.
Maybe nothing.
Not every observation requires a conclusion.
Perhaps that is itself the conclusion.
For so long we were given conclusions and then shown Scriptures that appeared to support them.
Maybe faith begins when we allow Scripture to remain Scripture without requiring it to validate everything familiar to us.
So I will not be at Milltown giving this testimony.
Or perhaps this is the testimony.
I don’t know.
But I do know that Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
He did not specify whether those two or three owned homes.
He did not specify whether they were workers.
He did not specify whether it was Wednesday night.
He did not mention convention.
He did not mention an overseer.
He did not mention a meeting list.
He simply said he would be there.
And if Jesus is already there, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain why so much additional machinery is required to bring him with us.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts I have been exercised about.
I don’t claim to have all the answers.
I only claim that Scripture does.
Although, having said that, Scripture frequently answers questions other than the questions we are asking, which may itself be the answer to a question we have not yet learned to ask.
I hope this is helpful.
Posted by Anonymous #11
August 7, 2026
On Ex-2×2 Support Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ex2x2/posts/2567236810409556