| Vintage Church |
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March 8 2009 My thoughts today come from reading the book Vintage Church by Mark Driscol and Gerry Breshears. What is helpful about this book is that they define both the church and church leadership. The writing is a little dry and tedious, but the thoughts are good and provoking. Defining the church The first point of note in their book is that often we do not define the church making it difficult to know whether a group of people are authentically followers of Christ, or simply a gathering of friends and strangers into a pseudo community. They give this definition, which I believe is an excellent description of the church:
"The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to Scripture they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism and Communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, and scatter to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission as missionaries to the world for God's glory and their joy." My only struggle with this definition revolves around my allegiance to our Denomination “The Salvation Army”, which has serious difficulties with the biblical practice of sacraments. This is a issue that continues to be debated by the leaders and members of our the Salvation Army and is not helpful at this point for our discussion on eldership. I simply think it is significant to note how important the sacraments are to a strong definition of the church. For Khi we practice an openness to the Sacraments, but fight against it being institutionalized into the weekly practice of the church, which I believe respects the Salvations Armies primary concerns against the sacraments, while honoring the biblical tradition of celebrating the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, by the partaking of communion, and occasional baptism of those convicted to do so. Once the church is defined it is easier to see who should lead it, and what are the qualities necessary for them to do so. The authors in this chapter give an excellent critique of postmodern church models, with a major concern being the negation of official church leadership and discipline. I find this is one of my major concerns about the emerging church as well. There seems to be a focus on things abandoned by the modern church that are important (community, social action/justice), but do not see the bible as primary to Christian life, and allow culture to over - influence doctrine and practice. They make this powerful statement: “…one generation believes a truth, the next generation assumes a truth, and the third generation denies a truth”. The struggle with the Western church as we adapt to the Post Modern world is that we change fundamental structures to become more evangelical assuming that people know the truth of the Gospel found in the scripture. This is probably true for the founding leaders and their first converts, but as the church grows and more people join eventually what is assumed is rejected, and suddenly the community is a bunch of do-gooders who believe Jesus is a morality teacher on par with Buddha and Mohammed and not the Son of God who exclusively holds the keys to our Salvation. Therefore as we look at this issue of eldership it is key that our definition of the church be centered on the bible, and the Leaders are raised up by God to ensure that the community is serving Christ and is humbly seeking him for guidance and practice. Elders, deacons and members: The next chapter of this book deals in great detail with our major concern for Khi at present. The establishment of leadership model that is biblical and relevant. Their first point is extremely important and applicable to our study. They state that Christ is the senior pastor of the church. All other leaders are fallible humans who simply desire to serve God and lead others in the community to serving Him. For the authors elders are simply pastors (lay or paid) with the primary responsibility of Spiritually leading the church. They are submissive to the entire church, mature Christians who embody the characteristics found in 1 timothy 3 and Titus 1. They then give a helpful distinction for the role of Deacon which functions as a practical support to the Elders which help to ensure the functionality of the church. “Practically elders and Deacons work together like left and right hands, with elders specializing in leading by their words and deacons specializing by their works” (75) They also help to define members as believers who are a part of the congregation, who have an equal role to the leaders in serving each other and advancing the Gospel. Leadership is used by God to help organize the church, and ensure that it is on task, making sure that quarrels are squelched and genuine love for one another rules the community.Women as Elders: Here is a major issue for us at Khi, based both on our denomination’s structure and the people that God has given us to help run the church. Driscol makes a strong argument using the eldership texts that women can not be Elders, or hold the main leadership office in the church. They can and do hold the role of Deacon which would include most of the roles found within the Eldership, except for preaching, and senior leadership. Most of my life I have felt it important to see woman as equals in both form and function in the church, realizing that women are equally gifted at preaching and leading as men. However, scripture is forcing me to reexamine this concept and really think through Male headship especially in the church, and home. This is not easy and my cultural upbringing really rubs raw against this concept. I hope that as we study and comprehend the entirety of Scripture that we will be able to resolve this issue and find a truly biblical balance between the two extremes. I believe that the issue of women in eldership will be important to work through during this process and incredibly difficult. Please pray for significant wisdom and understanding as we attempt to understand God’s desire for the church and especially for khi. Bill |
