Listen "Disputer,
This is in response to an article in the Gospel Advocate, May 5, 1960, entitled "Listen Preacher!" and signed "The Disputer."
The brethren should be convinced that "the church as such" has no more right to support a preacher's home than it has to support an orphan home. But the preacher is to be supported, "they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel." (1 Cor. 9:14); also, the orphan is to be visited (James 1:27). However, it is the preacher's obligation to provide for his family (home) and not the obligation of the church as such (1 Tim. 5:8).
An orphan home such as Childhaven, and a preacher's home are both institutions; but there is a major difference which Disputer completely ignored: the preacher's home, family, is a divinely authorized relationship; but such orphan homes as the one named is a human arrangement and an unauthorized relationship. If it is right to have such an unauthorized human institution in the church budget because a preacher is paid for his labor from the church budget, then Disputer, by the same perverted logic, can rightly have the Missionary Society and the secular school in the church budget.
Let Disputer present the passages of scriptures which teach that such orphan homes and preacher's homes are to be supported by the church. He says he believes it; but faith comes by hearing the word of Christ (Rom. 10:17). He has not and cannot present the passages which so teach; hence, it is gross presumption on his part, and he proves himself to be nothing but a disputer as that classified in 1 Cor. 1:20; "the disputer of this world."