Authority and Submission
As discussed on the Organization page, the week-to-week administrative
duties for our church are very small; they amount to scheduling the
monthly Large Group meeting and
facilitating the communication about Small Group schedules.
It is the Small Group leaders, themselves,
who tend to these administrative needs. Our method for selecting Small Group
leaders is very simple; anyone adhering to our beliefs as stated on our
Beliefs page and who is leading a
lifestyle reasonably commensurate with those beliefs is able to be one.
Apart from the Small Group leader is the role of spiritual leaders, which
in traditional institutional churches are often called "elders" or "shepherds".
In our church, those who serve as a Small Group leaders may also be a
"shepherd", but it does not necessarily have to be that way.
The role of our church's spiritual leaders are as follows:
- Protecting Against Unbiblical Beliefs: Our statement of beliefs is
fairly simple. However, it is possible for any group of people to introduce,
adopt, and have affection for errant beliefs that might be damaging. The
role of the spiritual leaders is to gently but courageously confront these
errant beliefs if they begin to establish a foothold.
- Dealing with Destructive Behavior: In any group of people, it is possible
that there may be those who have entered the group seeking to destroy or seeking to
gain some type of powerful position. The spiritual leaders, with meekness,
gentleness, and courage, are to confront that situation.
- Providing Shepherding to those who Ask: For those who ask, spiritual
leaders should make themselves available to those who seek their advice.
They must be willing to spend time with people, hear about their concerns,
pray with them and for them, and work with them to help them improve their lives.
- Be Examples of Servitude: The spiritual leaders are also to be examples
of humble servitude. Following the example of Christ, no job should be
beneath them.
As can be seen from the list, above, the roles of our spiritual
leaders are rather personal in nature. They have a great deal to do
with relationships and insight. While spiritual leaders in
institutional churches share some of these same types of responsibilities,
they must also oversee the many administrative tasks that are
associated with the facility, the paid staff, the church calendar,
the budget, and various church programs. In our church, we do not
have those administrative burdens and so our spiritual leaders can
focus on the primary responsibilities above.
Also, a distinctive feature of our church is that we do not place any
special barrier for any man wanting to conduct what are often thought
of as sacraments. For example, any man can lead a group in communion
and any man can baptize someone. These functions are often reserved
in institutional churches for clergy or lay leaders; not so in our
church. Since these duties are not reserved for the special spiritual
leaders, all that is left for the spiritual leaders to do is work that
is more behind-the-scenes and, as stated above, more person-to-person
in nature. They are also more dynamic in nature.
Because of the texture of the spiritual leadership position that is
afforded by our simple and rather open structure, the formalities and
additional procedures used in traditional, institutional churches for
selecting the leaders is not necessary in our church.
Rather, for reasons that will be discussed further, below,
it is sufficient to state the qualifications
of elders, and then ask the Lord to work in the hearts and minds of the
men in the congregation to examine themselves in light of those
requirements. If any man feels they meet them, they should feel free to
begin fulfilling the roles listed above.
Our requirements for spiritual leaders come from the Bible, specifically,
1 Tim 3 and Titus 1. They are as follows:
- Be above reproach
- The husband of one wife
- Temperate
- Self-controlled
- Respectable
- Hospitable
- An able teacher, one who holds fast to the truth,
and one able to correct those who speak against it
- Not a drunkard
- Not violent, but instead, gentle
- Not contentious
- Free from the love of money
- A good manager of his own household
- In control of his children in a dignified manner
- His children must be faithful
- Not a recent convert
- Be respected outside the church
The reason why it is important to state and respect these qualifications
has to do with the compliment to spiritual leadership, which is the concept
of submission.
The concept of submission to church authority has been a topic of
intense debate through the ages and has resulted in all mannars of injustice
and abuse.
There are, indeed, clear scriptural indicators that some Christians should heed
the instructions of others in the church. However, distilling those indicators
into practical procedures that are free from abuse has and remains a difficult
endeavor.
In our church, we seek to avoid the pitfalls that has resulted from
rigid processes associated with authority and submission.
It is a fundamental notion in our church that we are all equal children
of God and so, as stated above, we do not explicitly place any
person in authority over any other.
Instead, we ask each believer to consider the qualifications of each
person in our church and ask themselves the question, "Should I place
special emphasis on what this person is saying?" We ask that especially
in cases where someone might be touching on an aspect of their life that
is personal.
So in practical terms, the concepts of church authority and Biblical submission
boil down to these two things:
- Some of the men in the church taking it upon themselves to consider their
life and their qualifications as elders, and if appropriate, with love, humility,
gentleness, and courage, fulfill the roles of spiritual leadership in our church.
- For all people in our church, including those who would be considered "elders",
to make special consideration of the words
spoken by men who they believe to be worthy of
that consideration.
Digging Deeper: Biblical Basis for our Model
Sincere Christians rightfully want to organize churches in the way that pleases
God. The natural and reasonable way of doing that is by referring to the Bible,
especially the New Testament. We seek to do the same thing in our church.
In so doing, we first establish a philosophy for how to use the New Testament
for that purpose. The New Testament is a collection of historical accounts
(the four gospels and the book of Acts), letters recording one side of a
two-sided conversation (the epistles), and a prophecy (Revelation).
When we approach the question of how to use these resources in forming the organization
of our church, it is immediately apparent that they are not an explicit guidebook or rulebook.
In other words, unlike the Old Testament Law, the New Testament does not explicitly
take the tone of providing organized procedures.
Instead, there are descriptions of what occurred,
instructions for individual churches facing particular issues,
examples of solutions that only applied in their immediate
time frame, and also some definite overarching concepts.
The New Testament was not formatted
as a guide book for church authority structure.
Those who wish to justify authority structures using portions of the
one-sided conversations between Paul, Peter, James, and John between various
churches of their day, and endow those one-sided conversations with "guidebook" like authority
violate the scope of the authors' original intentions.
We believe that it is the elevating of the resources
provided in the New Testament to the status of "guide book" that has resulted
in church infrastructure that is too rigid and can be abusive.
It has resulted in multiple organizational models
that can all be justified by Scripture, including the Presbyterian, Ecclesiastical,
Congregational, Elder Led, and Pastor Led models.
All of these models can justify themselves from the New Testament.
What they have in common is that they use examples from the New Testament
as a sort of binding command for church polity.
One does not have to read very far in the New Testament to see that their approach
is not consistent.
In particular, no church today actually consistently fulfills the notion that New Testament
examples are binding.
If they did, churches would have complete communal property and would not build
buildings.
We seek to not fall into the trap of making New Testament examples binding.
Rather we use the New Testament as a document of truth and authority from
which we are to learn about what worked and did not work in the early church
and to learn how to approach problems in the church today.
Some of the key elements that we glean from the New Testament for application
today are listed below.
- The church should be well organized.
- The church is a living entity, that responds to needs dynamically.
- Corruption of leadership and beliefs is an ever-present threat that
must be watched with vigilence.
- Jesus provides the model of leadership. No job is beneath him. He is
courageous and firm against abusive and vain authority, while being gentle with
the lowly and repentant. He does not command people to follow him but invites
them instead.
We believe our model of selecting leaders meets these requirements.
Advantages of our Model
History has shown that it is deep within
the makeup of some men to try to assume a position of authority over others,
regardless of the context. Such worldly ambition brought into the delicate and
crucial aspect of spiritual authority can devastate peoples' lives and ruin the
sincerity of the collective church.
Multiple religions have and do deal with the aspect of spiritual authority.
The immergence of some form of priesthood, a select group of people who serves as the
spiritual authority, is commonplace regardless of religion's origin.
Sometimes priests are actually called "priests." But we argue here that the
same tendency that gives rise to the formal notion of "priest" also gives rise
to the informal notion of special spiritual leader. The specialness of pastors
in the Protestant church shares features of the priest -- they have spiritual
authority and are viewed as having been "called". Likewise, what are often
referred to as "elders" in institutional churches are endowed with spiritual authority
and congregations in Bible-believing Protestant churches are expected to submit
to their authority.
Today, our needs are different than the needs of those in
the New Testament, and so our selection of leaders is different.
Moreover, our needs for spriritual leadership are very different from that
of an institutional church.
The amount of administrative details to be overseen is miniscule.
Rather, the needs for leadership in our church are more personal.
Therefore, we believe it is advantageous
to leave the selection of our leaders to the Holy Spirit,
a process that, like other selection processes, is actually exemplified in Scripture.
The advantages of our method of leadership selection are as follows:
- It does not squealch the Spirit: Only the Lord knows the hearts of men.
If a participant in our church finds a certain person to be abusive or
unkind, it is inappropriate to ask them to submit to that person. The
man-made processes of selecting them, usually to fill a board of elders for
church management, cannot respond to the subtleties of relationships as
can the Holy Spirit.
- It puts more trust in the Lord: Mankind likes to make rules to try to build
some sort of security against all things that can go wrong. But history has
shown that no matter what man does, things will eventually become corrupt,
even working within those rules. This has certainly happened with churches.
We seek to throw our trust onto the Lord and ask him to take care of this
delicate matter of leadership by working in the hearts and minds of each
individual. For the leader, we ask God to give them the courage to do the
difficult task of leadership. For the submitter, we ask God to instill in them
the disposition to be convinced and be teachable.
- It is flexible and correctable: In a traditional, institutional, man-made selection process, a
man can be "nominated" to be an elder, then be confirmed by the church, and then
three weeks later stumble into sin or, in some other way, become disqualified.
In our system, we place a much lower barrier for that man to quietly withdraw
from the leadership position until his life has regained the proper order.
It is far more difficult for a man to make some type of public announcement of his
failure than it is to simply let a few people know, who might be depending on him for
counseling, that he is not in a position to help. In fact, there are numerous examples
of spiritual leaders failing, not coming clean, and reaking havoc on the local body.
We seek to lower the barrier for that and to employ the Holy Spirit in assisting our
church at a person-to-person level.