Army of Priests

“It is a universal tendency in the Christian religion, as in many other religions, to give a theological interpretation to institutions which have developed gradually through a period of time for the sake of practice usefulness, and them read that interpretation back into the earliest periods and infancy of these institutions, attaching them to an age when in fact nobody imagined they had such a meaning.” – Richard Hanson 

Ecclesiology is, in essence, the theology of Church. Wikipedia defines it as “that branch of Christian theology that deals with the doctrine pertaining to the Church: its role in salvation, and its origin, its discipline, and its leadership.” Angel fire describes it as follows: “the field of theology which deals with the nature of the church and what it means for the church to be the ‘body of Christ’.”

Protestant theology (particularly soteriology – the study of salvation) changed considerably during the reformation, its ecclesiology did not. This is what a typical Church looks like:

• There is a pastor or clergy or official staff
• There is a laity or general congregation
• There is a church building or special meeting place
• There is a special time each week for a service
• That service primarily involves a sermon from a single preacher and the rest of the congregation listening to him
• Communion may be distributed
• Some songs may be sung
• There may be various announcements for other events the church organisation is doing

All of the above elements were borrowed from Catholicism and, in tern, from Paganism (for a history of traditional Church practices I highly recommend “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola at www.ptmin.org). Not one of these elements is present in the New Testament (or at least not as practised today).

The result is a Christianity in which “the ears are the only organs of a Christian” (Luther – something he thought was good). This ecclesiology of Church creates a comfortable Christianity. The common problems with the “Clergy Driven” Church are outlined here.

The plan of the gospel

Church cannot be understood without understanding its place within the rest of theology. In short, humanity sinned and spoiled God’s creation. God has been working on restoring (redeeming) it since then. This is more than salvation. God does not merely want his creation to survive, we wants it to be “very good” again.

This entails change. The good news is not “accept Jesus and survive for eternity” it is “accept Christ and be made into a New Creation”. As Shane Claiborne puts it, “Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death.” (The Irresistible Revolution, pg 117) It is not the purpose of Christianity to get people into heaven; its purpose is to enact change in people on the earth now.

If the Old Testament used the plan “create external laws to change people” then the New Testament uses the plan “change people’s hearts to change their actions”. By being filled with the Holy Spirit our character and actions begins to change. We begin to become noticeably different from non-Christians.

This gospel of redemption is further detailed here.

The purpose of Church

In light of this the purpose of Church is to transform Christians and the world. The Church is the “advance guard” of God’s kingdom (a redeemed world). The Church is the bride of Christ (an organism with an intimate relationship with God). Let us investigate these two dimensions:

The Church is the forbearer of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is one in which human nature is corrected and people place others before themselves. It is a place in which God is honoured by all of us and in which the stains of sin (placing ourselves first) are washed away. Essentially God’s Kingdom is a community where every member places the other members of that community before themselves. This is the result of the transformation I speak of. The Church is meant to be the bearer of this community.

The Church is the bride of Christ. It is a body. The same love that causes us to place others above ourselves results in radical interdependence between Christians much like can be found in an ant colony. I have often wondered how as a Christian I am worthy of being the “bride of Christ” (a bit weird for a guy) but I now realise it is like wondering how a single ant can build a colony – it doesn’t. The Church is greater than the sum of its parts, great enough even to be the bride of Christ. It is our mission, on God’s behalf, to present that bride perfect before Christ. We must get ourselves and the Church ready for our wedding day.

Radical Christians and Ecclesiology

Radical Christians are the key to carrying out the purpose of Church. God’s kingdom is a kingdom made of Radical Christians. Christ’s bride is perfect only if it contains them. As Radical Christians duplicate they slowly transform the Church and the world, perfecting his bride and showing his kingdom.

The Church does not exist just to get people into heaven. It exists to change people at a deep level. Radical Christians are central to this. They are both the result of these processes and the initiators of it. I have talked about Church being changed by Radical Christians, but in reality the church should be changing people and making them Radical Christians. This catch 22 results in a situation where Christians (the Church) begin to build and change each other.

This post has been heavy and far too rapid. In my final post I will take this theory of Radical Christendom and show how it is practically applicable to our lives. In the mean time I remind you of Stanley Hauerwas’ quote:

“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principals for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self sacrificing love in its rituals and disciple. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message; but to be the message.”

The Radical Christian: An Overview

The Radical Christian: Being the Gospel

The Radical Christian: Revolutionising Society

The Radical Christian: How they got there

Also Recommend: Seven Suppositions about Church

The following seven suppositions briefly outline what I believe about Church. There is a lot of (potentially controversial) material in the following points:

1. The Church (which is Christians) exists to present itself as a complete, pure, and humble bride before God.

I propose that the Church (which is merely the plural form of “Christian”) is better understood as an organism (similar to a colony of ants) then an organisation. I believe that this organism is destined to become a perfect community as its members become perfect. I believe that the gospel is one not only of salvation but also of transformation and that this transformation from sinner to saint of individual Christians is central to the purpose of Church as a whole. In essence I believe Church exists to help Christians be transformed, and not merely saved. I believe that the end result of this transformation is a perfect new creation similar to what existed before the fall.

2. Radical Christians are self reproducing.

“Radical Christian” is the term I use to describe a Christian who puts God’s purposes before their own. (That is, they live to serve God and are not just a Christian for the sake of their salvation. In essence, a Radical Christian makes sacrifice a part of their walk with God and is a Christian who is being transformed.) I propose that Radical Christians are self reproducing without the aid of programs in that: 1) A Radical Christian will seek to spread the gospel with or without help from an organisation and 2) A Radical Christian will seek to grow and support other Christians. Not only are Radical Christians at the core of my vision for Church change, they are also the goal of it.

3. Radical Christians seek strong relationships. Strong relationships produce radical Christians.

I believe that Radical Christians will naturally seek out strong relationships. Not all personalities are conductive to truly intimate relationships, but I do believe that Radical Christians will place authenticity with others above acceptance by others. In fact, I propose that this type of relationship is essential for the growth of Radical Christians. These types of relationships encompass the idea of a “shared Christian walk” (growing in faith together).

4. It is my personal responsibility as a priest to build up the people around me.

I propose that people with direct access to God (aka Christians) have a responsibility to be a priest to the people around them. I do not believe that the work of building up Christians in the faith is the work of the clergy. I do believe that every Christian has a personal responsibility to care for, carry the burdens of, and nurture each other. I believe that this can take a variety of different forms that aren’t all (or cannot be) covered by traditional Church programs.

5. Everything I do affects the people that know me.

I propose that my every action has an influence on the people that know me. I believe that as an example of the transforming power of the gospel (which every Christian should be) that my life becomes the good news and not just the bearer of it. I believe I am responsible for what I do or do not do. I suggest that my personal walk with God (personal prayer, reading the bible, etc) will affect the people I know as it builds me in the faith.

6. God will use the ordinary to do the extraordinary through his unique gifts.

I propose that God has given the potential to “make a difference” to every Christian. I suggest that there is no such thing as a “super Christian” (i.e. I suggest that a pastor, for instance, has no more potential then a layman). I also suggest that most traditional Churches prevent Christians from reaching their potential by 1) allowing people to be lost in the congregation, 2) making a distinction between Clergy and Laity, and 3) not building relationships that nurture their members.

7. Love is the only eternal structure.

I propose that love becomes a form of Church structure as it influences the interactions of Christians. I propose that Church buildings, organisations, programs, sermons, and music are temporary, but that this “structure” of love is fundamental to the Church as an organism and will remain forever. Therefore, I believe that love between Christians (and to non-Christians) is far more important then buildings, organisations, programs, sermons, and music. I believe that our focus on programs can interfere with our love for each other. I also believe that love shown by God and Christians is the driving force of the transforming power of the gospel and hence a core part of the purpose of Church.

Yet more errors with the Clergy Driven church

Once a week event

When I listen to a sermon it may inspire me, it may challenge me, it may get me excited and hyped up for god, but I’ll forget it fifteen minutes after I walk out the door. It doesn’t matter how good the preacher is, I’ll fail to apply their teachings to my life. There are plenty of people in church (I was one) who have minds filled with great teaching, but whose lives fail to represent this fact.

Sermons can be great, but what I really need is for that preacher to be following me around all week – to be the angel on my shoulder, to provide ideas, reminders and support, and to hold me accountable. I need someone to not only give me a pep talk before sending me on the field; I need someone to play with me.

Christianity is a team sport! It’s also a hard one. The idea that one man could win a game of football is preposterous, no matter how good the pep talk is. This is why I, and all of us, need people to be there all the time. We need help, real help, and the type of help that lends a hand rather then gives a word. I think we often leave this to God. We think that it is God’s place to change a person’s life. I think that we have forgotten what God wants us to be. I think other people may be the tools God uses to change a person’s life.

I trust you can begin to see how important relationships are. A pastor cannot possibly provide this level of support to his entire congregation.

No flexibility

There are certain teachings and help that I need that are different to other people, there are also some teachings that are not going to help me at all. Church does not reflect this. We all get the same cookies cutter teaching when we turn up to church. Sure, the pastor’s in depth review of the book of Obadiah may be great, but it might not be what I need.

Depending on how bible studies are run, they may not help much in this regard either. Often bible studies will follow in a series, and will require you to look up verses in a set way, and make you answer a question the “right” way. They’re essentially a sermon in which the members can feel like they’re contributing. They don’t help. The next step up may be that we choose what to talk about the week before. This is better, but my needs could change, and if they’re not run right they can still be a sermon played out in a small group. What may be better I believe, is that we come with something we would like to discuss, or share, and have that stimulus provide further stimulus for a discussion in the meeting.

Do we really need to plan these things out in advance? On the “field” we will need to work on the fly, as it were. If someone asks you a question you need to be able to respond then and there, not after you’ve looked up all the verses pertaining to the topic. Maybe our bible studies could be training for this?

Costs

Imagine how many homeless you could feed if your church did not have a mortgage to pay. Imagine how many poor you could cloth if you did not have a pastor to support. A very, very small fraction of tithes is every used for these purposes.
The New Testament church did not have mortgages to pay, or pastors to support. Everything that was given could be invested into the community. They didn’t give a measly 10% either. In fact the verses that are commonly used to support tithing describe the ancient Jewish tax system if you inspect them closely!

Our giving should not feel like a tax, or payment for services provided. If you wish to sow into God’s kingdom, really sow, spend some time volunteering, or feeding the homeless, or clothing the poor. Also, don’t expect anything back. I am sick of hearing stories of how I will be blessed when I give. I do not give to be blessed – I give to bless others! That should be all the motivation we need. Giving is an expression of love, not of greed.

Difficult to expand

If your church grows beyond capacity, what must it do? It may have to move or build a new, bigger building, or it may have to take on new staff and pastors. Besides being painful, this increases costs and further increases the expenditures that prevent your tithes helping people in the community. In this way, people can actually be a burden on the church. Further members require more services, but do not provide any.

Continuing our list of problems with the Clergy Driven Church:

Doesn’t exercise spiritual muscle

Another problem with this is that the congregation never has a chance to exercise and learn to use their gifts! Imagine this, a new Christian in the church has a bad image, he drinks and smokes and generally has problems living the faith. However, God has given this new Christian and incredible gift of healing. Now this church has alter-calls, week in and week out, but that Christian is never asked to pray for anyone. No one ever believes God would use him like that, he’s just not suitable. As a result that Christian never learns he has this gift. He never gets the chance to exercise it, or grow in it.

This scenario is repeated constantly. The more a Christian is gagged, the less he learns about speaking out. Only the clergy is required to exercise their muscle regularly, and as such only they will grow in their gifts. This is disaster!A core goal of the church should be to grow its members potential in Christ. Church should be a gym for spiritual muscle.

What’s more, a Christian cannot be corrected unless people know he needs correction. Unless they are given the chance to explain their views, other Christians may never know there is a problem.

There are two big lakes in Israel. The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee has a number of rivers flowing into it and the Jordan river flowing out of it to the south. The Sea of Galilee is a beautiful, healthy lake with much life in it. The Dead Sea on the other hand, only has rivers flowing into it. Nothing flows out of it. Consequently the mineral content has built up and nothing can live in its waters. They don’t call it the Dead Sea for no reason.
Many Christians sit in churches all their lives hearing the Word taught. They learn Bible doctrine. They experience life and learn from their experiences, but they never pass on their knowledge and experience to others. They benefit from their knowledge and experience, but never allow others to benefit.
When we sit in the pew for our whole lives and don’t pass on our knowledge and experience to others, we become like the Dead Sea.(Discipleship Overview)

Single point of failure

Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout or contention in their churches. Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce. Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors. Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living. Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years. Seventy percent of pastors feel grossly underpaid. Seventy percent felt God called them to pastoral ministry before their ministry began, but after three years of ministry, only fifty percent still felt called. Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression. Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry. Seventy percent of pastors do not have a close friend, confidant, or mentor. Every year, nearly six thousand Southern Baptist ministers fall by the wayside, victims of burnout, depression, marital problems and even suicide. Another twelve hundred are fired. Eighty percent think their jobs have a negative effect on their families. (1, 2, 3)

Clergy driven churches exert an unreasonable toll on their leaders. This in turn has a negative effect on the entire church. Churches have crisis when leadership problems are present, and the clergy driven church structure is not helping. If all Christians are equal, then none of them should be put under this pressure, nor should any of them cause major damage to the church if they burn out.

Doesn’t build community

Listening to a sermon does not build my relationship with the person sitting next to me. There is a sad lack of true relationships in our churches. I have become aware of churches where everyone was lonely, where everyone wanted to reach out, but where no one did. And no matter how many programs or add-ins we attempt, no matter how much we urge people to invite people to each other’s homes, we cannot seem to get past this. This is a well known problem.

When you consider the place of fellowship in the typical meeting (a ten minute time slot or after the service is finished), you begin to gain an idea of the importance clergy driven churches place on relationships. The clergy driven church simply doesn’t need its members to have strong relationships in order to function. That doesn’t mean that there has been a lack of effort, that pastors and leaders don’t want these relationships to form, it merely means that their hands are tied by the system in which they operate.

The oft repeated idea that the church is our Christian family meant nothing to me until I realised that it did not exist. How can there be a family if we only ever see someone in events that other people have organised? If the only contact we have with people is the pitiful fellowship time on a Sunday morning? Ask yourself; is there a fellow Christian, besides your closest kin, to whom you could be completely honest and open? If there is not, then you have a problem. Unfortunately in many churches we don’t even seem to recognise that Christians do sin, little less is there a safe environment in which to get help.

First off, on a personal note, with the start of university I have become very busy and may struggle to produce these postings on a regular basis. I am also heavily involved in missionary work on campus which is facing both persecution and success. I would appreciate prayer for our work.

The modern church, which we shall call the “clergy driven” church looks alot like this:

In a clergy driven church the clergy are responsible for all the “services” that church supplies. That is, the clergy run the worship, give the sermons, do the praying, the counselling, the evangelising, and generally make all the decisions. The laypeople receive all the churches services via interaction with the clergy and have little need for each other provided that they support the clergy (that is the church will continue to run even if its members fail to relate with each other – as demonstrated by many churches today). The church service is the result of years of testing how to best project the clergy’s services over a large number of people. This makes sense, as a large number of people are required to support the clergy.

If you want evidence of this consider your typical Sunday Service. The large congregation sit all facing the front of the church whilst a considerably smaller group of people administer the service from the front. During worship the greater congregation follows the lead of the smaller worship group. The congregation have no say in what is sung, or how it is sung. During announcements or communion the greater congregation again listens to a smaller group, usually one. And during the centrepiece of the Sunday service, the sermon, a single person is disseminating the teaching “service” to the rest of the congregation. It is quite possible to attend church without talking to a single person. Interaction between members of the congregation is usually limited to a pitiful ten minute timeslot or before or after the service when officially the meeting is yet to start or has ended.

In order to counteract this many churches have bible talks or small groups. Whilst this is a step in the right direction, they are usually an add-on and are not truly central to the church’s operations.

Whilst the clergy driven church has been seeing lives saved for thousands of years, it falls short of the churches potential and detracts from some of the central tenets of our beliefs. Over the next few posts we shall examine 12 problems with clergy driven churches (I wrote these a while ago which make my work load easier as well).

The priesthood of all believers

In the Old Testament, the Jews could not directly relate with God. Instead they worshiped via a middle man who was the priesthood. The New Testament not only restored the ability for all men to have a personal relationship with God, it also restored the ability for all men to act on his behalf. Unfortunately the Catholic Church saw the loss of this significant change. The reformation would latter restore our direct relationship with God, but it failed to restore our place as workers of him. As such we have direct communication with God, but the clergy still does all the work!

The New Testament church is not about a large group of people supporting some small group of gifted men of God. This is Old Testament thinking. In the New Testament we are all gifted men of God! The New Testament is about empowering every believer in the body of Christ. It is about every believer playing and equal part, every believer having equal importance. Unfortunately this is not the case today. When the pastor of a church is given the bulk of the meeting’s time and a lowly member none, this is inequality – unfair to both the pastor and the congregation.

It is true that there are leaders, there are preachers, there are teachers, there are apostles, and there are pastors. But these positions should be of no more importance as helpers, or givers, or encouragers, or of prayers. (Why is it that a preacher can receive a standing ovation yet an elderly woman who has provided meals to the single mother next door receives none?) What’s more, these gifts are distributed among all God’s people. Not just the clergy! Why is it then that in the Sunday Service, the centre of the modern church, that the clergy are the only ones exercising their gifts for the benefit of the others?

This issue will become clearer as it reveals itself as the root of many other problems.

Waste of potential

The inability of the congregation to use their gifts results in a huge loss of potential for the church! Not only this, but each person has experiences and knowledge that can help people or provide a different perspective on any topic. However, it is very rare, and always rude, for any member of the congregation to offer their comments during a sermon. They cannot share their experiences, or their knowledge. This is God’s knowledge that he has given them! But they are required to remain silent unless they are given permission (ordained) by the church to express what God has given them.

Why do we do this? Why are we gagging God? What if God wanted to use the lowliest member of the church, the one with poor clothes that always stank? Could he stand up and speak, and how would he be received? What if God intended to change people’s lives with his words?

It is not enough to expect people to give “words of knowledge” during an allocated time in the church meeting. Imagine if I were to stand up and give this as a speech! Not only that, but many of God’s people are introverted, they can’t stand up before a hundred, but they do have things which are important to say. We must accommodate these people!

I cannot imagine how many people could have been saved, or how many lives could have been changed, if only God had been allowed to use any believer he saw fit for the task at hand.