One of the marks of our experience in a GC church was that of a lack of freedom of the believer that came from a misguided sense of the leaders thinking their "authority" (by the way, where do they get their authority....from each other, but that's a whole different topic) means they have some sort of obligation to tell each believer what God has for them regarding the personal details of their lives (jobs, where to live, how many kids to have, where to go to church) rather than having an understanding that their authority is simply to boldly preach the Word and hold Christians accountable to it.
Their idea of the authority of their position (again, we can't not ask the question of where did they get their authority) is to teach that:
If you want to go to a different church, you need to get permission from your pastor.
Or,
If you want to take a job in a different city, you need to get permission from your pastor.
Or, as one person told me,
If you want to have another child, you need to run it by your pastor.
This, I submit is bondage.
Here's a link to an excellent article, on the topic of freedom and bondage.
http://blog.togetherforthegospel.org/2008/02/the-bondage-of.htmlAnd here are a few quotes from it.
Personal reading, meditation, sermons, friends and books are all available to us to help us to better understand God's revealed will.
But I chose, consulting Scripture, friends, wisdom, and my own subjective sense of the Lord's will, to come to DC. And even if I were wrong about that, I had (and have) that freedom in Christ to act in a way that is not sin.
A subjective sense of leading--when we've asked for it (as in James 1:5 we ask for wisdom) and when God freely gives it--is wonderful. The desire for such a subjective sense of leading, however, is too often, in contemporary evangelical piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting.
Beware of the bondage of "guidance."
