The Church We See in the New Testament…
…defines how we structure the churches we’re part of today.
What do I mean by that? If you see a church in the New Testament as a missionary movement that planted simple house churches that reproduced themselves, you’ll build the church differently than if your picture of the church in the New Testament is more like a Methodist or even Pentecostal church service you can visit down the street. This forces us to ask the question, what am I reading into the New Testament?
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the area of elders*. I once read a blog by a leader within the body of Christ who had planted a church and assumed the role of an elder there. He was writing about elders and it was clear that much of what he was writing on was founded on a fairly traditional church view and based on his understanding of 1 Timothy and Titus. I (slightly) disagreed with this writer’s take on the subject and part of the reason was I’ve spent so much time trying to understand the church from the perspective of the book of Acts. I sat down to write a comment and in the midst of writing, I had an “ah ha” moment.
This may not seem like such a big deal to you, but think about it for a moment. Acts was written to show the missionary movement of the Gospel which largely involves Paul. And when we read it, we see very little structure and we see an expanding, multiplying church brought forth by the power of the Holy Spirit. Flip over a few pages to the book of First Timothy or Titus and you see established churches that Paul is asking Timothy and Titus to structure and raise up leaders within.
The problem that we have as believers is we often believe these are two different stories and the church remains divided along those lines. Many of our traditional churches have built structures and latch on to certain verses in 1 Timothy and Titus for their support. My house church friends think we have made things too complicated. We’ve slowed the spread of the Gospel down by our need for so much structure. These friends cling to the book of Acts in their reasoning. But friends, these are not two different stories. They are the same story.
There are profound implications to that thought. The ever expanding, simple, multiplying church movement we see birthed in the book of Acts needed the structural strengthening instructions that Paul laid out in 1 Timothy and Titus for the movement to continue. And the instructions and structure that Paul gave in 1 Timothy and Titus have to be interpreted in the light of the movement of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit that we see in the book of Acts. We cannot understand one without the other.
I say all of this to make this point: The church can again become the simple, multiplying movement of the New Testament once again, but it will need to learn from the wisdom of Paul. Paul knew from experience what it would take to sustain such a movement and some of his later writings were his attempt to strengthen the multiplying church movement he birthed. This included roles within each locality of elders and servants.
But if we can hold these two different examples that God gives us (Acts and the “Pastoral Epistles”) together and try to see the church in the light of them both informing each other, we’ll get a much closer idea of how God sustains the Gospel going forth through the ministry of elders and servants.
We’ll get into those details tomorrow…
*I keep promising to get into the discussion about elders. It’s coming. This post is part of a larger exploration on that topic that flows out of our larger discussions about pastors, shepherds, and the place of titles in the body of Christ.
Roles, Titles, Authority…and the True Gifting of Christ
The last several days I’ve been talking about the role of pastors/shepherds in the New Testament, how our house church network found a way to embrace them, and the real truth about ministry. But what about offices, titles, and roles?
Within the house church movement specifically there is a lot of reluctance to give people any kind of title or role. There are a lot of folks who have either been in ministry and been burnt out or there are people who have been hurt by a leader of a church, normally someone who is given the title of pastor. So there is a TON of reluctance to even talk about people being anything other than believers.
There’s also the role of hierarchy. Paul wrote that we should “with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves,” (Phillipians 2:3). The human, carnal side of us often looks at someone with a title and elevates that person above others. This can happen in the mind of the person with the title and in the mind of the people who know the person. Jesus reminds us of this reality when he says “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters,” (Matthew 23:8).
So what do we do with titles like apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher?
First, I believe in the priesthood of all believers. All believers have direct access to God and do not have to go through another person to have a relationship with Christ. I also believe that the Bible was written for third world peasants, so a born-again person who can read has the ability to interpret the Bible for him or herself.
But I don’t believe that all believers are gifted similarly. To put it differently, while I believe in the priesthood of all believers, I don’t believe in the apostleship of all believers or the pastorship of all believers*. Paul tells us several times that while we all have one Lord and the same Spirit, He gifts us differently. In fact, the first century church experienced such a diversity of gifting that Paul was forced to argue for the oneness of God every time he talked about gifts. His point was we have one Lord and so even though there are different giftings, they don’t point to separate gods or separate spirits from God. One God gives diverse giftings.
But Paul had another emphasis in Ephesians four. Paul says in Ephesians 4:7 that “grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” He then goes on in verse 11 to mention five gifts “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.” I personally believe that these five different types of giftings are part of each person in the body of Christ. And so naming that gifting isn’t so much a “giving an office” to a person, as it is describing the role they play in the body of Christ.
So we don’t spend a ton of time appointing apostles, prophets, pastors, or evangelists. We just recognize the gift when we see it in a person. Does a person regularly lead people to Christ? They’re probably an evangelist. Does a person regularly care deeply for the needs of those in their church? Most likely they’re a pastor. We use the name of the gift to call out the uniqueness of the person, but not to give a person any special sense of authority.
Authority is a sticky wicket in this discussion because it’s real and yet can be so easily abused. We rely heavily in our network on relational authority**, which means you listen to me because you know me, you know my track record, and you know I care about you. I’ve never had a conversation with someone where I’ve “forced” them to listen to me. I’ve reasoned with people. I’ve pleaded with people. I’ve told them there are YUGE repercussions with Jesus for not listening to some things I’ve said. But at the end of the day, if they don’t want to listen, I can’t do anything to make them. Nor would I want to.
Why do I think people should listen to me? It’s not because I’m the senior pastor or because I started the house church that birthed our house church network. It’s because I’m a believer in Christ and we’re called to submit to one another in the fear of the Lord. I have to do that with those in my house church. No one, in any church, is at the top of a pyramid somewhere that they don’t have to listen to anyone. Mutual submission is the mark of Christ’s church.
So we all have access to God. We all are gifted, albeit differently than others. And we can all have authority in relationship with others to the degree that we are known, our track record is consistent, and we operate in love. And this gives me comfort in calling another brother or sister a prophet/ess or an evangelist, because it doesn’t make them special or higher than all of us. It tells us how Christ uses them.
This has immense implications for everything we do, especially in the realm of elders and servants. But I’ll write more on that tomorrow.
*I do believe however, that apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers are to equip the body, of which apostles and pastors are a part. While this thought is probably a post for another time, I think it’s important to note that apostles need to learn from evangelists, and prophets need to learn from teachers, etc.
**Look forward to another post soon about the benefits of relational authority.
Ministry Lessons from A Wash Basin
Yesterday I had a brother write in with questions about offices, ordination, and titles because of my article about how we embraced shepherds as a house church network. And it deserves a better response than I can give today.
The problem when we start talking about any kind of ministry is our heads have been clouded with hundreds of years of historical context that tell us a ministry is a position of privilege. Ministers are the known, the great, the ones with clout in our eyes.
But Jesus has a much different definition of ministry than we do. In fact, in the Greek that the New Testament was written in, a ministry was a position of service. Some uses of the word minister refer to someone who serves at a cost to themselves.
Nowhere is this more evident for me than in Jesus’ lesson to the disciples in the upper room in John 13. Jesus gives the disciples and us an example to follow by getting down on the floor and washing the filthy feet of those in the room. This was a job reserved for a lowly servant. And then he says this:
After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message.
-John 13:12-16
Have you ever washed someones feet? It’s not a glorious process, even today, where at least in the West our streets are much cleaner. It’s humbling, both to wash feet and to have your feet washed. And if Jesus calls us to any kind of ministry (re: service) it’s this. To humble ourselves and get lower than others and do what no one else would be willing to do.
Hundreds of years of church history has taught us that ministry is being the smartest man in the room, having the most honor, or being paid to be spiritual. But at it’s core, ministry is service, humbling service, in the same style that our Master modeled for us. Until we get that idea right in our heads, our hearts, and our spirits, all ministry will be wrong, whether it is titled or not.
Photo Credit: psk-footwash-small by peterskim
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 