How Brotherhood Eliminates Hierarchy
But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers.
-Jesus, Matthew 23:8
One of the things I think we miss in our crusade against hierarchy is the simple way Jesus taught us to avoid it. Simply put, brotherhood is the antidote to hierarchy.
Quickly: Hierarchy is a word that means there are some people or things higher than others. It was first a word used to distinguish orders of angels, then to distinguish rank among ministers in the church, and then came to be used in society and business management. Why is it bad? Jesus had this revolutionary idea that there shouldn’t be hierarchy within the movement He started. I believe He saw the danger it caused when people thought some of God’s people were better than others.
Jesus not only warned us about hierarchy, though. He gave us the solution to it. The solution isn’t limiting our uniqueness or hiding our giftedness. The solution to the problem of hierarchy is becoming brothers*. If you’ve ever had brothers (or been fortunate enough to have friends that are like brothers) you’ll know why. Brotherhood growing up is one of the first forms of communitas that we come to understand. Healthy brotherhood gives everyone a place without elevating men or women above one another.
I had the unique privilege growing up of watching my dad interact with his father and three brothers. My dad was the youngest of five children, younger by about ten years than his next oldest brother. And yet, when my dad and his brothers got together there was no struggle for superiority. When my grandfather passed away, no one tried to become the new leader of the family. There was no struggle for grandpa’s status. It was just the brothers (and my aunt of course) still being family. They knew who they were (sons and the daughter of Albert Kolder) and they knew each other well enough to respect but not glorify any of the others.
Imagine a church like that. A church where every person who was following Jesus didn’t strive for position. No one tried to become the father of the family. Everyone was confident in their place in the spiritual family. They knew their identity and their value. In fact, they were so healthy as brothers and sisters, they eventually matured to the place where they were healthy enough to start families of their own.
Yet even among churches that hate hierarchy the most (which I would argue comes with its own set of problems), there is little expression of brotherhood. And so suspicion, animosity, and a lack of love often result. It’s a little like a country who hates an evil ruler of another country. So they depose the the ruler of that country and install another, only to find out that the new ruler is just as bad or worse than the one they installed. The fear of hierarchy becomes as bad of a ruler for a church as any hierarchy ever would.
But Jesus taught us a better way. If we would learn to be brothers and sisters, hierarchy would whither as a result. How do we learn to be brothers and sisters? More on that tomorrow…
Photo Credit: Following in his brother’s footsteps by Scott Monty
*If you’re reading this and you’re a lady, know that brotherhood is merely a the best word that I can use. God calls us all sons regardless of our gender. I get to be part of the bride of Christ some day. We all have…ahem…gender terms…in the Bible that don’t make us comfortable. Know you’re included.
The Inefficiency of Relationships
Whenever I have a conversation about joining or starting a house church with someone who has never been part of one before, there are a number of things I tell them. But I always mention one thing every single time: Be prepared for things to take longer.
Why? Because relationships aren’t efficient. And for those of us who are part of the business world, or part of a highly structured church, or even just those among us with Type A personalities, this can be more than a little frustrating.
But relationships are built on things like trust, respect, and love. All of these elements require time: time to be shown, time to be earned, and time to develop. None of these happen quickly.
Think about your best friend. You’ve probably gotten things done together. But the times you remember best…the times that make that relationship more worthwhile than others…are the times you spent together doing things that didn’t accomplish much outwardly. Whatever those times were they communicated more than just a task. The times you look back on are the ones that say to you “You are important to me.”
A few years ago I had a disagreement with a brother who was part of our house church network about how we were going to make disciples. We went around and around talking about methods, but when we got to the heart of the matter, his real concern was that I was more concerned about our “church” succeeding and not about him. It was a real learning moment for me. I had put our mission above our relationship and I was wrong.
I wish I could say I never made that mistake again. I can say I’ve made it less and I work to deny that part of me that just wants results. But it’s meant letting projects and work take a back seat whenever a serious need comes up. It’s meant stopping a conversation when it becomes obvious we aren’t arguing about strategy, we’re missing each others’ heart. It’s meant meetings that should take an hour or two sometimes take three or four. But it’s been worth it.
I’m not saying things shouldn’t get done. Quite the contrary, we have a mission friends, and that mission is very important. But how we do the mission is just as important. If we devalue people as we pursue it, we invalidate the very mission we set out to accomplish. If we use people to accomplish our mission, we may accomplish a mission we set out to do, but we’ll leave a trail of broken people in our wake.
My goal in saying this is not to persuade you that relationships are bad or that they hurt mission. They just come with a cost that you need to recognize up front. They are time consuming and don’t always move in straight lines. But over the long haul, if you stick with them, they pay off both now and in eternity.
Just don’t expect them to be efficient.
Selfie Spirituality: Part Two
Yesterday I wrote about our tendency to take pictures of ourselves being spiritual as a metaphor for our tendency to follow Jesus for the sake of recognition.
But the more I thought about selfies, the more I realized that there are two aspects of selfies that are difficult for me. The first is the focus on ourselves. This is pretty obvious because the product is a picture of us.
But there is a second aspect of selfies we don’t think about. Not only are they about us. They are by us–and only us. We take our own selfies. This may not seem revolutionary, but only a few short years ago, if we wanted a picture of ourselves somewhere, we had to ask someone to take it. We had to meet people. We had to trust people with our camera. We had to ask for help.
So while this isn’t affecting our devotional time quite like instagramming our time in the Bible, I believe there are some comparisons we can draw from the cultural phenomenon that is selfies.
Selfie Religion
This is our tendency to want to go at it alone. A kind of John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, I-Did-It-My-Way kind of spirituality. We like doing it our way because it makes us feel important. We get to be the hero. We found our way. We discovered the truth all by ourselves without help from anyone.
And while I love people who are motivated to find God and discover the truth, I think this idea that we can pursue Jesus all by ourselves without any input from others in truly dangerous. It comes with a kind of pride that is dangerous to our soul. Paul says this: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). If we are believers in Jesus, we have received much from others.
I certainly believe God visits us and speaks to us. I believe we are all priests to God and can get direct access to Him. But I also believe we are called to receive from, learn from, and be a part of the beautiful body that Christ is forming. This protects us from heresy and it protects us from pride. I’m not sure which is worse.
Selfie Churches
You would think that selfie churches would be an oxymoron. You would think that the very idea that a group of people gathering together. But how many times have you seen a group of people taking a selfie with a selfie stick?
In much the same way, their are churches where people gather, but they keep others at arms length. They want an us-four-and-no-more church or a church made up of only the purest of the pure. Or they can be a group of people who don’t want to learn from the rest of the body. The body of Christ was designed to learn from each other and that includes congregations being willing to learn from wise believers outside of their body.
There’s another type of selfie church. This is the church that is content with reaching out only to other Christians. They want to grow, they’ll invite Christians to come for their great preaching or their children’s program or their worship team. But it never really is reaching out to those they don’t know. It’s never inviting the stranger or the outsider into “the picture taking process.” Their is a sickness here as well–a pride of a different kind.
Friends, I’ve taken a few selfies. I get it. It can be fun. So I’m not against them. But I’ve used the analogy of selfies to help us understand how relying on ourselves or our group only can hurt our walk with the Lord. We have to invite others in both for our good and for theirs.
So take that selfie. But remember, you need people in your life. I do to. Invite some friends into your life to speak the Gospel to you. And speak the Gospel back. And invite those who you don’t know or don’t know well to join you. It will change how you live.
Photo Credit: Setting up the Shot by EightBitTony
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 