Five-Fold Ministry – Part 2
In this second installment, I will talk about what the pastor role might look and sound like as a part of a new vision for five-fold ministry. I know I’m skipping around a bit in the Ephesians verse, but it’s my blog.
I have a history with the word pastor because I was trained to be one, at least in the classic sense. Again, from an evangelical perspective, the image that the word “pastor” invokes is fairly defined on surface issues yet carries with it a multitude of variations in its deeper practice. Depending on your heritage, “pastor” might take on a dignified, elegant tone and bring to mind images of a gentle man presiding over a community’s spiritual needs. It could also mean one who is an impassioned orator who weekly storms the stage pleading with the congregation to hear and live the word of God. “Pastor” might look like a business executive, carrying out managerial responsibilities in the context of a frenetic entrepreneurial enterprise. Or it could be the one the community looks to in times of crisis as a rock of stability and faith, having all the right words and prayers to say for any occasion.
There are other images of course, but the one thread that runs through them all is the singularity of one man or woman fulfilling the vision of what it means to be pastor in their specific context. Without going into tremendous detail, I want to propose that we first abandon this singularity in order to build tension with the surface-oriented images of pastor. A pastor is not a person who leads the church, preaches, holds office hours for counseling, heads the elder board, visits people in the hospital, officiates at weddings, and puts on a nice face to people in the community. Those activities may have pastoral elements, and certainly a pastoral gifting would help in order to carry them out, but a pastor they do not make.
As an aside, I want to use an example that shows how difficult it is to navigate the cultural expectations of the pastorate with the need to redefine how the role of pastor truly operates in a transformed paradigm of church. Today I was reading an interview Christianity Today did with Mark Driscoll, the influential and often controversial leader of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Here is the first question of the interview and Driscoll’s reply:
CT: “How will your book, ‘Confessions of a Reformission Rev’, help other ministries?” MD: “My hope is that it will point to Jesus and help others see that without Jesus as our senior pastor, we are doomed to fail.”
Driscoll’s answer surprised me based on my impression of his strong pastoral style and hierarchical male-dominated leadership structure. The idea of Jesus as our senior pastor is indeed a good one, at least in the sense of Jesus being the central figure that our lives individually and corporately point to. However, I wonder how this idea might filter into the actual leadership and structural fiber of a church such as Mars Hill. After reading the interview, I followed a link at the bottom of the page to Driscoll’s blog. The first post was titled “Elder Government” and gave a link to notes from a talk Driscoll did for the Acts 29 network he leads. The opening paragraph elaborates a bit on this “Jesus as Senior Pastor” idea and throws in the Holy Spirit for good measure:
“Jesus Christ is the apostle who plants a church (Hebrews 3:1), the senior pastor who leads the church (1 Peter 5:4), and the head of the church (Colossians 1:4; 2:10, 19) who grows and builds a church (Matthew 16:18) or shuts it down for becoming faithless and/or fruitless (Revelation 2:5). Additionally, it is the Holy Spirit who convicts people in the church of sin, gifts them for service, empowers them for fruitfulness, and selects the elders who are to lead the church.”
This is a wonderful, scriptural depiction of Jesus and the Spirit’s activity within the church as a whole. Then something curious happens in the next paragraph:
“Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals that when God wants to get something done He starts by selecting a dude to lead that change and works through that dude. Examples include sparing humanity (Noah), founding a nation (Abraham), liberating a nation (Moses), establishing a throne (David), building a temple (Solomon), preparing hearts (John the Baptizer), reaching Gentiles (Paul), and redeeming creation (Jesus). Therefore, a church cannot be successfully planted and expect to survive if it is not led by a dude who obediently follows God as He speaks through Scripture and leads through the Spirit.”
On the surface, that appears again to be a perfectly agreeable depiction of a biblical idea. Yeah, God uses people to do His will. We become His “hands and feet” if you will. However, did you notice the subtle shift that occurred by Driscoll making this exegetical transition to create a platform for the rest of his discussion on elder government? Where did Jesus and the Spirit go as the “senior pastor”, “head of the church”, convictor, gift-giver, empowerer, etc? Did he say that “a church cannot be successfully planted and expect to survive if it is not led by a dude…”? I thought Jesus was “the apostle who plants a church.”
Driscoll’s exegesis is correct, yet incomplete. The fact is, God used those “dudes” in the Bible because his preferred way of dealing with humanity was either being resisted or was simply unavailable. God used Noah because humanity had entirely closed its ears to their creator. He used Abraham because of his obedience, but any listening and obedient nomad would have done just fine. Moses was used because Israel had grown up as a people in the wrong land and had become slaves. David was a wonderful choice for king, but isn’t there something in there about the people of Israel choosing to have a human king rather than God alone? Solomon built the temple, but “will God really dwell on earth?” (1 Kings 8:27) John prepared hearts because the teachers of the law had lost sight of the “signs of the times”. Paul pushed the church to open itself to Gentiles because the obvious was being resisted by the other apostles.
In all these cases, God used someone to do something that couldn’t be done the preferred way or to clean up a mess that was created when the people of God forgot who they were, forgot who was King, and forgot they were living in his eternal kingdom. If God has to hand-pick a person to do something no one else will do, it is usually not good news. This is not business as usual in the kingdom. Driscoll’s argument is that God chooses a “dude” to become the chief “dude among dudes” to lead a church. But where does that leave the idea that Jesus is the Senior Pastor with the Spirit facilitating the inner workings of people growing into maturity who then bear fruit? The navigational difficulties now begin to become apparent.
As a part of my vision for a renewed five fold ministry, I want to suggest a pastoral role that fits within the paradigm of Jesus as head of the church and the only “Dude” worth having around.
Pastor -> Spiritual Orienteer
Orienteering is a sport that I have never tried but has always piqued my curiosity. It is a simple sport, but holds the unique synthesis of physical stamina and mental acuity under pressure in order to complete the course in the shortest time possible. The closest I’ve ever come to participating in something like orienteering would be the scavenger hunts we used to have in college in Campus Crusade. Our campus director would provide clues pointing us to obscure locations all over Gainesville. Invariably, we would run from one location to the next, sweating, panting, and trying to make sense of some crazy riddle. Although stressful at times, the joy of the scavenger hunt was watching the unique talents emerge from the group along the way. One person would hunker down as the riddle solver focusing all their mental energy and producing answers to guide us to the next location. Another would have a knack for navigation on the crowded Gainesville highways. Someone else would race from the car to the place where the clue was hidden and back before any other teams could get theirs. The best teams were the ones who could manage the frantic pace yet keep a calm enough demeanor to not drive 50 miles out of the way because of a wrongly interpreted clue.
Spirituality is confusing, exhausting, and downright frustrating at times. But as with orienteering or scavenger hunts, learning how the riddles fit together and the compass points us along the path to the next point of discovery can be an exhilarating experience. A good working definition of “spirituality” is the comprehensive and concrete practice of living life with the awareness of the presence and interaction of Someone or Something who is involved in us and our world. In Christian Spirituality, that Someone is God the Father through Jesus by the Spirit and He is intimately invested in a preferred outcome for our life – living as his disciples as agents of his kingdom. We are to be changed, transformed, to become like him, to be able to naturally and freely love and do good. However, the path to entering this kind of life is not without tremendous struggle and travail. Sometimes the riddles just don’t make any sense. We lose our compass in the mud. We get blisters and ankle sprains. We get into fights with our teammates. It rains. The other teams hide the clues to the next location (which happened on more than one occasion in our Crusade hunts). And most often, we just give up because working through the course is just too damn hard.
This is why God in his infinite wisdom and grace does not intend us to have one “dude” pointing the way. We were never meant to go along for the ride while someone else solves the riddles, checks the compass and the map, and then marks out a path to the next checkpoint. Pretty soon even the most rugged and experienced guide will get discouraged. However, the greater chance is that they will from time to time (and even frequently in some cases) just be dead wrong. Fifty miles later and not a clue in sight, you begin to wonder why you’re playing the game in the first place.
What is needed in this climate of uprooted and teeter-totter spirituality is for spiritual orienteers to emerge who understand that the game they are playing requires a supernatural level of guidance, wisdom, and stamina that can only come from God Himself. They are people who are learning how to play the game in harmony with other orienteers and with the Spirit. These are not guides who see themselves as the only person who will get the team from point A to point B. Nor do they reduce the game to an individual effort that destroys the free-flowing leadership the Spirit provides to gently nudge (or forcefully push) the team to each goal.
So what might this five-fold role look like in practice? Spiritual orienteers are the extreme sport junkies of the church. They are not content to plod along with the status quo, adding badges to their spiritual Boy Scout uniforms. They dive into the depths of God’s riches in prayer, in the Word, in His mind and His thoughts. Together they search for answers to the growing-edge questions posed by the community. They pursue the wisdom of other saints and guides that have gone before and completed the course. Some are gifted in understanding about how God works and what He cares about. Others point out new pathways the Spirit opens to deeper maturity and fruit. And some are like Forrest Gump carrying injured Bubba’s and Lieutenant Dan’s out of the jungle just as fast as their legs can go. None of these orienteers need a title or a salary to do their job. Some may be resourced by the community for a time for a particular purpose. However, the true orienteer is in the game for the pure joy of getting to the next level and helping others do the same. He or she has the same mindset Paul had in his Ephesians 4 vision for the church:
“…to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
This is true pastoring. The “Dude” is Jesus. We get to be in his game and play according to his rules, which really aren’t rules at all but a flowing stream of love, wisdom, and power that we collectively tap into. The spiritual orienteers are the ones not afraid to get sweaty and dirty. They often get tired, which is why there must be plenty of them to go around. But their value to the community’s health and fruitfulness is essential and irreplaceable.
I have a history with the word pastor because I was trained to be one, at least in the classic sense. Again, from an evangelical perspective, the image that the word “pastor” invokes is fairly defined on surface issues yet carries with it a multitude of variations in its deeper practice. Depending on your heritage, “pastor” might take on a dignified, elegant tone and bring to mind images of a gentle man presiding over a community’s spiritual needs. It could also mean one who is an impassioned orator who weekly storms the stage pleading with the congregation to hear and live the word of God. “Pastor” might look like a business executive, carrying out managerial responsibilities in the context of a frenetic entrepreneurial enterprise. Or it could be the one the community looks to in times of crisis as a rock of stability and faith, having all the right words and prayers to say for any occasion.
There are other images of course, but the one thread that runs through them all is the singularity of one man or woman fulfilling the vision of what it means to be pastor in their specific context. Without going into tremendous detail, I want to propose that we first abandon this singularity in order to build tension with the surface-oriented images of pastor. A pastor is not a person who leads the church, preaches, holds office hours for counseling, heads the elder board, visits people in the hospital, officiates at weddings, and puts on a nice face to people in the community. Those activities may have pastoral elements, and certainly a pastoral gifting would help in order to carry them out, but a pastor they do not make.
As an aside, I want to use an example that shows how difficult it is to navigate the cultural expectations of the pastorate with the need to redefine how the role of pastor truly operates in a transformed paradigm of church. Today I was reading an interview Christianity Today did with Mark Driscoll, the influential and often controversial leader of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Here is the first question of the interview and Driscoll’s reply:
CT: “How will your book, ‘Confessions of a Reformission Rev’, help other ministries?” MD: “My hope is that it will point to Jesus and help others see that without Jesus as our senior pastor, we are doomed to fail.”
Driscoll’s answer surprised me based on my impression of his strong pastoral style and hierarchical male-dominated leadership structure. The idea of Jesus as our senior pastor is indeed a good one, at least in the sense of Jesus being the central figure that our lives individually and corporately point to. However, I wonder how this idea might filter into the actual leadership and structural fiber of a church such as Mars Hill. After reading the interview, I followed a link at the bottom of the page to Driscoll’s blog. The first post was titled “Elder Government” and gave a link to notes from a talk Driscoll did for the Acts 29 network he leads. The opening paragraph elaborates a bit on this “Jesus as Senior Pastor” idea and throws in the Holy Spirit for good measure:
“Jesus Christ is the apostle who plants a church (Hebrews 3:1), the senior pastor who leads the church (1 Peter 5:4), and the head of the church (Colossians 1:4; 2:10, 19) who grows and builds a church (Matthew 16:18) or shuts it down for becoming faithless and/or fruitless (Revelation 2:5). Additionally, it is the Holy Spirit who convicts people in the church of sin, gifts them for service, empowers them for fruitfulness, and selects the elders who are to lead the church.”
This is a wonderful, scriptural depiction of Jesus and the Spirit’s activity within the church as a whole. Then something curious happens in the next paragraph:
“Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals that when God wants to get something done He starts by selecting a dude to lead that change and works through that dude. Examples include sparing humanity (Noah), founding a nation (Abraham), liberating a nation (Moses), establishing a throne (David), building a temple (Solomon), preparing hearts (John the Baptizer), reaching Gentiles (Paul), and redeeming creation (Jesus). Therefore, a church cannot be successfully planted and expect to survive if it is not led by a dude who obediently follows God as He speaks through Scripture and leads through the Spirit.”
On the surface, that appears again to be a perfectly agreeable depiction of a biblical idea. Yeah, God uses people to do His will. We become His “hands and feet” if you will. However, did you notice the subtle shift that occurred by Driscoll making this exegetical transition to create a platform for the rest of his discussion on elder government? Where did Jesus and the Spirit go as the “senior pastor”, “head of the church”, convictor, gift-giver, empowerer, etc? Did he say that “a church cannot be successfully planted and expect to survive if it is not led by a dude…”? I thought Jesus was “the apostle who plants a church.”
Driscoll’s exegesis is correct, yet incomplete. The fact is, God used those “dudes” in the Bible because his preferred way of dealing with humanity was either being resisted or was simply unavailable. God used Noah because humanity had entirely closed its ears to their creator. He used Abraham because of his obedience, but any listening and obedient nomad would have done just fine. Moses was used because Israel had grown up as a people in the wrong land and had become slaves. David was a wonderful choice for king, but isn’t there something in there about the people of Israel choosing to have a human king rather than God alone? Solomon built the temple, but “will God really dwell on earth?” (1 Kings 8:27) John prepared hearts because the teachers of the law had lost sight of the “signs of the times”. Paul pushed the church to open itself to Gentiles because the obvious was being resisted by the other apostles.
In all these cases, God used someone to do something that couldn’t be done the preferred way or to clean up a mess that was created when the people of God forgot who they were, forgot who was King, and forgot they were living in his eternal kingdom. If God has to hand-pick a person to do something no one else will do, it is usually not good news. This is not business as usual in the kingdom. Driscoll’s argument is that God chooses a “dude” to become the chief “dude among dudes” to lead a church. But where does that leave the idea that Jesus is the Senior Pastor with the Spirit facilitating the inner workings of people growing into maturity who then bear fruit? The navigational difficulties now begin to become apparent.
As a part of my vision for a renewed five fold ministry, I want to suggest a pastoral role that fits within the paradigm of Jesus as head of the church and the only “Dude” worth having around.
Pastor -> Spiritual Orienteer
Orienteering is a sport that I have never tried but has always piqued my curiosity. It is a simple sport, but holds the unique synthesis of physical stamina and mental acuity under pressure in order to complete the course in the shortest time possible. The closest I’ve ever come to participating in something like orienteering would be the scavenger hunts we used to have in college in Campus Crusade. Our campus director would provide clues pointing us to obscure locations all over Gainesville. Invariably, we would run from one location to the next, sweating, panting, and trying to make sense of some crazy riddle. Although stressful at times, the joy of the scavenger hunt was watching the unique talents emerge from the group along the way. One person would hunker down as the riddle solver focusing all their mental energy and producing answers to guide us to the next location. Another would have a knack for navigation on the crowded Gainesville highways. Someone else would race from the car to the place where the clue was hidden and back before any other teams could get theirs. The best teams were the ones who could manage the frantic pace yet keep a calm enough demeanor to not drive 50 miles out of the way because of a wrongly interpreted clue.
Spirituality is confusing, exhausting, and downright frustrating at times. But as with orienteering or scavenger hunts, learning how the riddles fit together and the compass points us along the path to the next point of discovery can be an exhilarating experience. A good working definition of “spirituality” is the comprehensive and concrete practice of living life with the awareness of the presence and interaction of Someone or Something who is involved in us and our world. In Christian Spirituality, that Someone is God the Father through Jesus by the Spirit and He is intimately invested in a preferred outcome for our life – living as his disciples as agents of his kingdom. We are to be changed, transformed, to become like him, to be able to naturally and freely love and do good. However, the path to entering this kind of life is not without tremendous struggle and travail. Sometimes the riddles just don’t make any sense. We lose our compass in the mud. We get blisters and ankle sprains. We get into fights with our teammates. It rains. The other teams hide the clues to the next location (which happened on more than one occasion in our Crusade hunts). And most often, we just give up because working through the course is just too damn hard.
This is why God in his infinite wisdom and grace does not intend us to have one “dude” pointing the way. We were never meant to go along for the ride while someone else solves the riddles, checks the compass and the map, and then marks out a path to the next checkpoint. Pretty soon even the most rugged and experienced guide will get discouraged. However, the greater chance is that they will from time to time (and even frequently in some cases) just be dead wrong. Fifty miles later and not a clue in sight, you begin to wonder why you’re playing the game in the first place.
What is needed in this climate of uprooted and teeter-totter spirituality is for spiritual orienteers to emerge who understand that the game they are playing requires a supernatural level of guidance, wisdom, and stamina that can only come from God Himself. They are people who are learning how to play the game in harmony with other orienteers and with the Spirit. These are not guides who see themselves as the only person who will get the team from point A to point B. Nor do they reduce the game to an individual effort that destroys the free-flowing leadership the Spirit provides to gently nudge (or forcefully push) the team to each goal.
So what might this five-fold role look like in practice? Spiritual orienteers are the extreme sport junkies of the church. They are not content to plod along with the status quo, adding badges to their spiritual Boy Scout uniforms. They dive into the depths of God’s riches in prayer, in the Word, in His mind and His thoughts. Together they search for answers to the growing-edge questions posed by the community. They pursue the wisdom of other saints and guides that have gone before and completed the course. Some are gifted in understanding about how God works and what He cares about. Others point out new pathways the Spirit opens to deeper maturity and fruit. And some are like Forrest Gump carrying injured Bubba’s and Lieutenant Dan’s out of the jungle just as fast as their legs can go. None of these orienteers need a title or a salary to do their job. Some may be resourced by the community for a time for a particular purpose. However, the true orienteer is in the game for the pure joy of getting to the next level and helping others do the same. He or she has the same mindset Paul had in his Ephesians 4 vision for the church:
“…to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
This is true pastoring. The “Dude” is Jesus. We get to be in his game and play according to his rules, which really aren’t rules at all but a flowing stream of love, wisdom, and power that we collectively tap into. The spiritual orienteers are the ones not afraid to get sweaty and dirty. They often get tired, which is why there must be plenty of them to go around. But their value to the community’s health and fruitfulness is essential and irreplaceable.
posted by Mike Bishop at 11:51 PM
15 Comments:
http://theemergeblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mars-hill-experience.html
Thanks for the link. I'm glad that person (is it you or someone else?) enjoyed Mars Hill Church and at least from a visitor's point of view saw them working out "Jesus as Senior Pastor" in practice. If that is in fact the way it is, then wonderful. My purpose was not to slam Mark Driscoll or Mars Hill, but to suggest that the practice of pastoring on a broad scale be released to the whole congregation in a way that truly honors Jesus as the head of the church and doesn't just talk about it. I hope that was clear.
One more thought...the question I have concerns "How do you do that in real life?" It's one thing to go to a church and get the sense that the nursery workers understand that Jesus is Senior Pastor, but how did they get that way? In other words, when God calls a community of faith into existence, how does it functionally move from some wannabee church planter's dream to a thriving network of disciples? That is what I'm suggesting is the work of the "Five-fold ministry" in the way I'm describing.
Mike, this is powerful stuff. I think it is a natural extension of Wimber's teaching on spiritual gifts as "the toolbox" where the tool for the situation at hand is provided to whomever has faith to reach into the toolbox, as opposed to the usual paradigm of "you have gift A, I have gift B."
Leaving the pastoring to the people is like leaving the sheep without a shepherd. Christ is the ultimate head shepherd, yet he commands Peter to feed his sheep. Jesus is in heaven, and we are his body on earth. Among his body, some have the special job of pastoring.
Whenever the apostles planted a church, they left someone in charge. That pastor was to plant churches and appoint people over them, eventually themselves being succeeded by someone else. The person is sometimes referred to as a bishop, presbyter or pastor, but they are essentially the leader of the local church. Paul referred to three generations of succession in II Timothy 2:2; himself, Timothy and those Timothy would teach. This is clearly born out in Church history, and can be seen numerous times in the letters of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century martyrs and leaders of the church.
Nowhere in Church history has the leadership ever been left to "the congregation."
Perhaps, there are some aspects of the role of pastor that could be better done by the congregation in the modern setting. However, to give up the idea of an individual pastor/presbyter/bishop altogether is to invent a novel idea of church leadership not found in scripture or history.
Doug
doug - he did tell Peter to feed the sheep, but were His words only to Peter or to all the apostles (the twelve, the seventy, and on and on)? here, we struggle with interpretation again...is Jesus setting a model by appointing Peter head of this thing Jesus will do(one person over a flock), or is Peter the ultimate example of one who is participating and partnering in this thing Jesus came up with: ekklesia. Is Peter's profession the the chip off the old rock or is He the chip off the old rock? I find it interesting that there just may be a multiplicity of doing this church-thing; Paul started churches, left to go facilitate the gathering of other churches, and only goes back later to appoint leaders/elders...this is his pattern and sometimes he sends one of the teammates (like Titus) back to where they have facilitated a group to appoint leaders/elders. at least early on, these all appear in the plural (as far as I can tell). i was discussing some scripture in a biblestudy i attend, and we ended up having a really great discussion about apostles and pastors, and ecclesical leadership structure based on the early church sources. the leadership structure that all of the sudden seems to jump onto the scene in the second and third centuries (after a much less structured model earlier in the first and early second century) seems to be likely because of threats to the early church from heresies and persecution (within and without), thus perhaps where grassroots emergence and appointment of leaders (which initially included women according to Pliny) became institutionalized because of threats to the foundation of the faith. but i think the church is much more than an institution. anyway, i think i have babbled enough...
mike - i like this stuff, and something you said a week or so ago is still haunting me: how do I faciliate a group where Someone else is really the leader? (this is going to be one of the discussion points in the kingdom workshops we are doing here in maryland this summer).
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Doug,
The point of this little series of posts on the five-fold ministry is to show that there is leadership in the local church - pastoral or otherwise - but I believe there needs to be some work done to retool the language we use and to highlight aspects of the roles that have gotten lost in more recent, common practice.
As I said in my post, my hope would be to abandon singularity in order for a multiplicity of pastoral gifts to be released in a community. This does not mean "leaving the pastoring to the people". It means that we shouldn't leave the pastoring up to one person.
Again, my argument is that "pastor" is often limited to "a person who leads the church, preaches, holds office hours for counseling, heads the elder board, visits people in the hospital, officiates at weddings, and puts on a nice face to people in the community" etc. etc. The pastoral gift is better served by a group of people in covenant with one another exercising their gifts for the sake of the community, each other, and the world.
I highly recommend reading the book "Missional Church" edited by Darrel Guder, particulary Chapter 7 for more on leadership out of a covenant community. I think you'll see that what I'm suggesting is certainly not ahistoric or novel.
Stephen - look forward to hearing more about the kingdom workshops.
Steve,
While I don't think that Jesus was suggesting that Peter was the only one who was supposed to feed His sheep, Jesus did seem to be talking directly to Peter and only to Peter in the passage I obliquely referenced. Again, I was not trying to make the argument that Peter was the only one who was supposed to feed the sheep. I was simply stating that the apostles appointed individuals to lead churches. In many cases we know who these folks were, and they weren't groups of people.
Regarding the structure of the early church, while it was certainly less defined than it is today, I think some people underestimate how defined it really was. Consider Clement's epislte to the Corinthians, written in the 1st century and by a man who personally knew the apostles. He clearly says that it was the apostles who set up the system of bishops and deacons. In chapter XL through XLIII he gives his thoughts on the subject, even stating his opinions over why there was contention over the "office" of bishop. I don't even touch here on the letters Ignatius writes. Many folks today would find his opinions about the necesity of loyalty to the local bishop scandalous. While the exact form of this structure is somewhat debatable, it is certainly clear that the early church was never run by groups of individuals. While certain jobs were certainly farmed out, it is also obvious that there was a single individual who was considered responsible for the health of the local church.
When one juxtaposes the formation of the structure of the Christian Church with the formation of the canon of Scripture, it is clear that the former preceded the later by centuries. Perhaps I'm a bit too defensive because I've heard some people who argue for elder leadership also argue for an early apostasy, because without it their position is defenseless. On the same token, they claim that over the centuries, the apostates slowly put the canon of scripture together under the guiding hand of God.
If one is going to look for an interpretive tradition on church structure inspired by 20 century Americans vs. one taken by 1st and 2nd century Christians from the lips of the apostles and their disciples, I tend to go with the old folks. As Chesterson said, "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Orthodoxy, 1908
Doug
He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep."
John 21:17
"Again, my argument is that "pastor" is often limited to "a person who leads the church, preaches, holds office hours for counseling, heads the elder board, visits people in the hospital, officiates at weddings, and puts on a nice face to people in the community" etc. etc. The pastoral gift is better served by a group of people in covenant with one another exercising their gifts for the sake of the community, each other, and the world."
Mike,
I agree that many things pastors do can be delegated. After all, that seems to be one of the main purposes for appointing deacons in Scripture. I'm just trying to make the point that Scripture and history clearly show us churches with individuals leading them and not merely elder groups.
Doug
Mike,
Are you referring to the book "Planting Missional Churches" by Ed Stetzer? The ch. 7 title seems to fit, but the author is different.
Doug
found it. missed an l in guder. unfortunately, i'll have to look for it at a library. the book exceeds my book budget.
hey doug -
i agree, some today would never go so far as are early church fathers like clement and ignatius to say that you should follow the bishop as following christ jesus. we'd probably be thrown out of a lot of churches today if we said that, lol. i think we essentially agree, in that team is good and we aren't for a one-man show. i was listening to steve nicholson, head of the church-planting task force in the Vineyard, and he made the comment that even in the team there has to be someone with whom the 'bucks stops here', a first among equals with responsibility, which i also agree more or less. my simple point, which i probably did not phrase well, is that while embarcing the 'Great Traditon' we have in the Church, pastoral leadership and styles will differ in every tongue, tribe and nation. while leadership is necessary, the way it plays out amongst those gathered together is adiaophera, or a matter of indiffernce as Paul might put it. i love that quote by Chesterton! i do have a question though...just wondering about your thoughts on this: i have been havong conversations with a friend of mine in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and she just loves the Eastern Orthodox. She talks about how wonderful it is be able to trust someone who can trace the 'laying on of hands' back through the mists of time to the apostles. this kind of caught in my mind, and i began wondering: is there something to that? i feel like it can be used like a wildcard in a spiritual poker match, and that certainly absolute trust should never be given to a human without continued discernment. i feel like i have been called into this pastoral role with some grace from God, but no one has laid hands on me and the only trump card i can point to is the active work of the Spirit in my life in this direction. anyway, i would appreciate any thoughts on this that you guys have...
cheers
ok, just had to add this: i am much encouraged by one of alan creech's recent blogs where he mentioned that neither st. benedict nor st francis of assisi were priest, niether did anyone lay hands on them. ok, encouraged. check it out at: http://www.alancreech.com/
peace
Steve,
Thanks for the link to creech's blog. I found the article you were pointing to and it was pretty good.
I do think it is important to remember the context in which St. Francis and St. Benedict lived. They did not live out their faith in a vacuum, but in the context of the church. Thus, when Francis refused ordination in order to focus on his life or prayer, poverty and preaching to the people throughout the countryside, he gave up any desire he may have had to administer the sacraments or to have responsibility for the spiritual well-being of the local people. Francis both lived dependent on the local priests to attend mass. He was also under the authority of the church leadership and took this idea of obedience so seriously that he incorporated it into the "Rule." This is so hard for us to grasp in a culture that prides itself on individual freedom and autonomy. The very idea one would need to obey someone else in spiritual matters is repulsive to people today. The idea too that the ability to administer certain sacraments is limited to the ordained is quite foreign to many people today.
I must admit that I'm a Catholic convert, so I have a certain perspective that I approach this with. Speaking for myself, it only made sense when I became familiar with the early church fathers and began to see the continuity between the early church and the new testament... a context within which one could have much more reliable interpretations of scripture.
Doug
hey doug -
i dub thee the new John Henry Newman. smile...just joking - i have read newman's material and of his struggle and eventual conversion to Roman Catholicism, and i can appreciate it. interestingly enough, i have a great love for the rites and tradition of the catholic church...as i was growing up most of my friends in school were catholic and when i would go to stay with them for the weekend we would often go to mass either on saturday evening or sunday morning. it's funny only because i really loved the service and experienced God through it, often much more than my friends who were raised in the tradition.
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