Note: J. I. Packer is the award-winning author of numerous books, including the classic Knowing God. SmallGroups.com recently had the chance to speak with Dr. Packer as part of an editors' panel in the offices of Christianity Today International.
Do churches and small groups have a responsibility to fight heresy when laypeople teach others?
Yes, churches are responsible for weeding out heretical teaching, and that's pretty clear from the New Testament. In those early days of Christianity out in the pagan world, there were any number of cults and any number of false views. And in the Pastoral Epistles we see individuals who are held up as solemn warnings—"Don't go their route."
Let me also say that it's my firm conviction that churches ought to foresee this unhappy possibility of heresy getting in when lay-folk are leading. And they should counter the possibility by what in the history of the church has been called "catechesis." We hardly hear of it these days, but in the second and third centuries A.D.—and indeed for some centuries after—it's rather amazing to discover that inquirers into the faith were fed into catechetical classes.
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