Our position: local administration does not cancel the obligations of shared fellowship. Knowingly maintaining prohibited fellowship can itself become disobedience; knowing support of that continuing breach must be examined by the same scriptural standard.
Does responsibility stop at the ecclesial boundary?
Ecclesias manage their own affairs. The question is whether that independence can excuse an ecclesia from acting when it knowingly participates in fellowship with persistent error. We believe it cannot. The commands of Christ govern the relationships we choose to maintain, as well as the teaching and conduct within our own meeting.
This is our challenge to Central Fellowship brethren and sisters: where ecclesial autonomy is used to place established error beyond examination, does that practice preserve the shared basis of fellowship—or set it aside?
Fellowship is participation
Second John addresses people who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh. Receiving and supporting such teaching makes the receiver a participant in its evil work. The immediate context matters: an application to another error must establish that error as a comparable breach of apostolic teaching or conduct.
First Corinthians 10 describes communion as a real sharing. Fellowship cannot therefore always be treated as morally neutral because a participant privately disagrees with what is knowingly admitted. The question is what the act of communion affirms and whether Christ’s commands permit it.
Follow the responsibility, one link at a time.
- Establish the original breach.Identify the doctrine or conduct, show why Scripture requires correction, and establish that the error persists despite an adequate opportunity to respond.
- Examine knowing participation.If another person or ecclesia knowingly gives prohibited support to that continuing breach, there is now an action of their own to answer for.
- Apply the same rule to the next relationship.If a further party knowingly endorses that persistent act of prohibited fellowship, the same participation principle applies. The number of links does not change the moral rule.
- Demonstrate the facts at every step.Knowledge, actual support, persistence and the nature of the fellowship act must be shown. Mere acquaintance, a shared label or an unexamined exclusion notice does not establish them.
The claim is a chain of fresh, accountable actions. Guilt does not travel automatically between people. Each further link depends on establishing that the particular participation is itself prohibited.
What autonomy can—and cannot—decide
Local independence gives an ecclesia responsibility to investigate and judge its own action before God. It does not give it authority to remove a command of Christ. Other ecclesias likewise retain responsibility for their own communion and cannot answer an established breach simply by saying that it belongs elsewhere.
There is also a distinction between disagreement over a governing principle and disagreement about the facts of a particular case. If two ecclesias uphold the same principle but reach different honest judgments about disputed evidence, that difference should not simply be relabelled deliberate toleration of error.
Our objection is to making autonomy a defence for known, persistent disobedience. The case must therefore show that this is actually what is being defended, rather than assume it whenever two ecclesias reach different decisions.
A question Central’s own history raises
The historical collection The Central Position on Fellowship and Withdrawal reproduces Roberts’s 1885 argument that knowingly receiving those who receive serious error can create a further responsibility. It also reproduces Carter’s writing on inter-ecclesial obligations.
The same collection defends ecclesial independence and recognises differing judgments on questions of fact. It therefore supports a precise challenge about consistency between acknowledged principle and actual practice. It does not establish that all contemporary Central ecclesias deny responsibility beyond their own walls.
The underlying articles include Roberts’s The Nature and Conditions of Fellowship (September 1885), Carter’s Inter-Ecclesial Responsibility (July 1945), and his Autonomy and Its Limits (October 1956). These are historical witnesses to examine alongside Scripture.
Questions & responses
Is this simply guilt by association?
No. The argument concerns a person’s own knowing support of a continuing breach. It must establish what the relationship actually involves. Meeting someone to correct them, ordinary kindness and prohibited endorsement are not automatically the same action.
Would this require investigating an infinite network?
Responsibility concerns known or credibly reported facts and reasonable inquiry where they affect communion. It does not require supernatural knowledge of every person. Deliberately avoiding relevant evidence is different from the ordinary limits of human knowledge.
Did faithful people remain in imperfect ecclesias?
Revelation 2–3 distinguishes individuals within troubled communities and gives opportunity for repentance. That prevents treating everyone as equally guilty at the moment of warning. It does not turn a call to correct known corruption into permission to tolerate it indefinitely.
What if the original withdrawal was wrong?
It must be reviewed. Third John condemns Diotrephes’ exclusionary conduct. An unjust exclusion can itself be a breach; being first to withdraw does not make a judgment righteous. The original decision and each later act of support must withstand the same scrutiny.
Does Romans 14 require acceptance?
It protects the differences the passage addresses. A fellowship argument must show why the disputed issue is a matter of fundamental teaching or commanded conduct, rather than a permitted difference. Calling a matter essential does not prove that it is.
What ends the chain?
Correction and repentance can end the relevant breach. So can establishing that the alleged support did not occur, that the original allegation was unproved, or that a difference was scripturally permitted. The limits arise from the facts and commands, not from an arbitrary number of relationships.
The aim is faithful communion and restoration.
Matthew 18 seeks to gain the brother. Second Thessalonians joins withdrawal with continued admonition, not hostility. Second Corinthians 2 calls for forgiveness, comfort and renewed love after effective correction. A fellowship policy must preserve that purpose.
To apply this argument to a current Central Fellowship case, the evidence should identify the original breach, the relevant fellowship decisions, what each party knew, the attempts at correction and the replies received. This page sets out the governing case; it does not claim to have proved every present association a breach.
Adapted from An Apostolic Faith, pp. 54–57. Historical material is linked above so that both the participation principle and its stated qualifications can be read together.