As promised, I attended the fellowship for the month of November. Last night was the last.
What's funny is the pastor had intended me to lead the fellowship alternately, but the fellowship leader had somehow prevented that from happening. Perhaps the pastor should have communicated better with the fellowship leader.
Instead of me as planned, Alex was the one who led last night's fellowship. In terms of teaching, my choice too as I had always told even the pastor that instead of me, those who had actually gone through serious seminary studies should be the ones to lead or none at all. The less teachers the better. All leaders of fellowship studies are playing the role of teaching in one way or another. Too bad this church can't really produce preachers and pastors. However, for the sake of proper doctrinal teachings, whatever it takes.
Only one thing that kept troubling me during that time. When Alex quoted Martin Luther's "Sin Boldly". Thanks to WIKI, I have this quote:
If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true
mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an
imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be
a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust
in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over
sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here,
for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says
Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new
earth where justice will reign.
Letter 99, Paragraph 13. Erika Bullmann Flores, Tr. from: Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche Schriften Dr. Johann Georg Walch Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol. 15, cols. 2585-2590
I was quite sure Dr. Tong did not quite agree with that Lutheran statement either. Remembering taking one of his course where he compared that to Watchman Nee's even worse solecism.
Instead of finding it perplexing, I'd rather call it a solecism.