Shortly before I was awarded my Master of Divinity degree, a professor who was relatively popular with the students renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church in America in order to avoid disciplinary charges being filed against him, a move which (sadly) I've seen repeated on a number of occasions. At the time, a graduated friend of mine said that while I might not like that action, it was to be expected when the Church is merely a voluntary association. I replied that in a presbyterian understanding of the Church, there's nothing voluntary about Church membership: every believer must be, by definition, a Church member.
James R. Rogers makes a similar point in "Ecclesiastical Exceptionalism," noting that baptism unites us as irrevocably to other Christians as it does to God. Thus, we should not view the Church as a voluntary association because "If the Church is no more than a spiritual version of the Rotary Club, then it is no more than another avenue for our self-expression and self-interest."
Men contemplating the Gospel ministry should ask what they would do should the brethren judge their teaching to be out of accord with the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures. If their impulse would be to renounce their present communion's jurisdiction, they might well wonder whose interests they hold closest to their hearts.
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