Note: What follows is adapted from a paper submitted as part of my education under the Antioch School. The requirement for the paper was that I design "a set of guidelines for establishing local churches anywhere according to an advanced biblical understanding of Paul’s concept of establishing local churches, including instructions for 'house order' of local churches."

​If our work is to be establishing churches, then we need to know how to establish churches in a way that is flexible enough to fit into contexts as widely different as first-century Jerusalem and modern New York, rigid enough to do the work Christ has intended for the church without straying from His intended model, and drawn from scripture as the normative expectations Christ and the apostles had for the church. The process we see Paul implement time and again essentially falls into three stages: assemble a body, impart solid teaching, and entrust to established leaders. This article will explore a definition and the necessary elements of each step.
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We see more of this work in Acts than in Paul’s letters, largely because Paul was often writing letters to bodies he’d already assembled. There is limited exception to this, in that Paul occasionally gives instructions to his recipients on how to identify people who should not be in the body and thereby performs work related to, but not actually within, the assembly stage.  Throughout Acts, however, we see the initial practice in more detail. Jesus assembles His followers and gives them instruction to wait as a body for the work He has for them to commence.(1) In response to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, those who believe are baptized into the body and begin sharing their lives with one another. Paul consistently goes to a gathering place (usually a synagogue), delivers the gospel message, and then sets apart those who believe into a new body.

Even when we see individuals become Christians, they do so in community. Cornelius and the Philippian jailer are both saved alongside their households, Apollos is familiar enough to the church of Ephesus after his conversion that they were willing to send a letter vouching for him when he traveled to Corinth in the very next verse. We tend to focus on Paul’s miraculous encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, but his conversion was not complete at that point; the Holy Spirit doesn’t descend on Paul, a repeated sign for the moment of true conversion in Acts, until Ananias comes to welcome Paul into the church body. There is, in fact, only one exception in all of Acts: the Ethiopian eunuch is not immediately brought into a local church body when he is baptized by Philip. Church history tells us that he brought the gospel back to his own country and a community of faith was immediately formed there, but we have no record of this in scripture. The oddity of this event is, itself, indicative of how the alternative is the accepted norm throughout scripture.

I am of the belief that every valid(2) denomination and theological movement within Christianity is really good at highlighting at least one, but not more than a small handful, of truly important elements of the faith that other denominations or theological movements overlook or undervalue, and that we would benefit greatly by more deeply considering these pockets of truth we can learn best from outside our own traditions. Sometimes they become so absorbed by this truth that they let something else wither entirely or develop a wrong understanding of a related concept out of misplaced focus, but the foundation they are using for this is still worth understanding. This is one area that I would argue the Roman Catholic Church has us at a theological disadvantage: there really is no salvation outside of the church. The See has, in some times and in some ways, taken this to a questionable place, but the proper solution cannot be the rugged individualistic salvation we have accepted so long in Baptistic, Pentecostal, and other related environments. We are not, I would argue, saved as individuals; rather, we the church are saved together.(3) Upon adoption as children of God, we are brought into communion with the rest of His children. We are members of the body, indeed, we cannot be outside of the body of Christ without being apart from Christ. Salvation inherently gives us a body to which we belong, and our growth must happen within the context of that body.

There are few places where this is more apparent than in a church plant. I have been a member of four church planting teams, one of which I led, and these have produced some of my closest relationships to date. The scope of the work, when faced with a small band of Christians, pushes people in a distinct way. I have heard much about how church planting work tests one’s faith and missional focus, quickly weeding out anyone not prepared for the work and any aspects of our lives that interfere with the work, and this is all true; but I have heard significantly less about how it connects the people involved. My wife and I have grown considerably in our relationship through the ups and downs of church planting. When we were working in Greenfield with one other couple, we became family. Our kids were constantly together and began to act like siblings, the mother of that family is still my wife’s best friend; a divorce and seven years later, and we make a trip to New Jersey every year to see her and her husband and the kids even when we don’t have the means to visit my biological family the next state over. We all grew together, we invested in one another, we hurt for one another, we rejoiced together, and although no lasting church was established in Greenfield from that work, I believe we have displayed the kingdom of God more accurately alongside them than we have in many churches with longstanding buildings and budgets. We have another family with a similar level of connection, and that grew out of working together on a church planting team in Fitchburg.

The mistake we make too often is conflating the importance of unity with the styles we use in our gatherings. We are commanded not to forsake the assembly; we are nowhere commanded to sit facing a stage and listen to a half hour lecture. I don’t have much against our modern practice of gathered worship—other than the strict rigidity with which we practice it—but this structure is not essential and is, at times, detrimental to that which is essential. That is, getting everyone together at a specific time on Sunday morning, singing a set constant number of songs, praying at scheduled intervals, listening to a sermon, and receiving a benediction is not a bad model in and of itself, but our insistence on it as “what church looks like” diverts our attention from how the church is actually intended to function. It’s easy to view our unity as defined by how many of us are sitting in the same room at the same time hearing the same message, but that isn’t where the unity of the body is practiced, and having the room become too large makes it impossible to practice any real unity. The body, in order to look like the church as established by Christ, must be grounded on intimate relationship guided by solid teaching under the authority of established leaders.

​The guidelines for proper assembly, then, are that the body is gathered in an environment that facilitates and encourages intimate relationships, the body invests in the spiritual growth and practice of spiritual gifts by all members, the body puts structure as secondary to purpose, and the body is prepared to send out members to establish a new assembly before it grows too large to accomplish the previous guidelines. There are a few concrete ideas that arise from this—such as the need to have some offline connections and relationships and gatherings, the need to guide spiritual formation in the proper way of Christ, and the need to send out church plants rather than growing too large for deep community—but much of the practice of this will be contextual and must be flexible to be applied correctly in different environments and with different people. If the purpose of the church involves the healthy growth of Christ’s body, both by multiplication and by maturity, as this blog has argued it does, then the structures that accomplish that purpose must be curated to the place and time and people to which it ministers.(4) These guidelines direct the boundaries of that flexibility, but must remain broad.
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The assembled body must be built upon and maintained by the truth of who Christ is and to what He has called us. The way we ensure this is through deep, consistent, and accurate teaching, delivered by some number of established leaders who are faithful to the truth of scripture. This teaching is broadly concerned with a right understanding of God, a right understanding of our relationship to God, and a right understanding of our relationships among ourselves.

A right understanding of God is the basis of all theology, and is concerned with the nature and works of God in all matters. Every other teaching flows from this; everything about the church is defined by who God is and what He has done and is actively doing and will yet do. Here is covered such topics as the nature of the Trinity,(5) the person of Christ, the work of salvation, and God’s ultimate victory at the end of the age. This topic is vast, and must be constantly revisited and expanded upon in order that its application in the other topics is held to the standard of truth.

A right understanding of our relationship to God is focused on who God is to us and who we are to Him. This topic tells us about our need for salvation, how our salvation has changed our standing before God, and how we are to grow in the new life to which God has called us. Here we see how submission to God is imaged in our submission to church leadership and the submission of wives to husbands and children to parents, how the mission of Christ has been handed to the church and therefore what goals the church must seek to achieve, and what it means to become children of God and heirs of His promise, among others. This teaching must be delivered frequently to ensure the church is aligned with its role in God’s plan, but it must also be a source of guidance for all the church does as a body and how the church invests in individuals. The first topic tells us what God we serve; this topic tells us how we, as a body, best serve Him, and must be always on our mind and in our teaching to ensure we approach our mission properly.

A right understanding of our relationships among ourselves guides our understanding of life within the family of God. This topic is about how we engage with one another, what authority and submission look like in daily practice, and how to live out the love that Christ has poured out so lavishly on us. Here we get into the nuts and bolts of the house order, describing the terms of our submission to authority within the church and within the home, detailing the practice of the nested dualities I covered in a previous post, applying the calls in scripture to view others above ourselves and love our neighbors as ourselves. This teaching is almost always an application of one of the other topics, but is important and must be included whenever application is being delivered. Our assembled body must be guided on how to be an assembled body, and this topic concerns itself with that more than any other.

When I was planting in Greenfield, I mapped out a sermon series that lasted one year as our very first study. Essentially, it worked through the Old Testament and sought to understand its themes through the lens of Christ, beginning with creation and ending, at the beginning of Advent, with Christ as the culmination of all the other things we’d discussed. The aim of this study was multifaceted; it revealed how the work of God and the heart of Christ was present throughout all scripture, it focused our attention on Christ in all matters, and it trained us to see Christ as the focus of every story and every theme throughout the Old Testament. The idea was that new people coming into the church would learn who God is through His dealings with mankind, and established Christians would be reminded of the role of Christ in redemptive history and the application of the Bible’s lessons. That the church would begin rooted in this understanding and what it means for us. I was not able to finish the series before the church folded, but have kept the basic outline just in case I have opportunity to explore it again.

Because this is the nature of the guidelines for imparting solid teaching; that established leaders point to God through His word to reveal His nature, call the body to live in light of our role in His purposes, and guide the body to daily lives reflecting the truth and glory of God among us. That teaching plan I started to put into practice was aimed at these very objectives, but obviously it is not the only way to apply these guidelines. The objective is simple: teach often, teach faithfully, and apply the teaching to every aspect of the life of the church and the lives of its members.

Paul, having bound a body together and delivered the word of God faithfully to them, identified those who were gifted and growing in maturity in such a way that they could be trusted to continue the work after he was gone. These were drawn from the body itself and placed into the role of leadership, held to a higher standard to ensure they were fit for the duty, and taught the functions of a leader to properly guide the body. These people were expected to teach faithfully, to protect the body from false teaching, to maintain the house order of the church body, to carry out the work of church discipline, to identify and train new leaders, and to send out parts of the body to establish new bodies as appropriate.

Paul details the means for selecting these leaders in his letters to Timothy and Titus, but their work is constantly visible in all his letters. The leaders were the ones expected to impart the teaching Paul was including in his letters, they were the ones being called to oversee any acts of discipline Paul called for, and they were responsible for the daily application of the principles Paul explained. Peter directly addressed his letters to the leaders themselves because of these responsibilities. In the house order, the leaders were those who held the honor of leading and directing the church, and the responsibility to do so in a manner that glorifies God and serves His purposes. The leaders are those who impart the teaching, who guard the body, who constantly refocus the body on Christ to ensure He is the foundation of the body’s work and unity.

The guidelines, then, are that the church has leaders in place who have been properly identified by an established church body and trained in service to Christ, who maintain the standards of leadership described by Paul, who are treated as authoritative by the body, who are able to teach and willing to correct, and who are able and willing to identify and train new leaders. These leaders should be placed within the biblical duality of elders and deacons, with the office of elder reserved for men. There must be a plurality of leadership; one man’s mistakes cannot be given enough power to damn the mission of the entire body.
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The guidelines which must shape all churches in all places and times, then, are the broad ideas illustrated through these areas of concern. That the church must be an assembled body living in deep relationship that glorifies God, taught faithfully on the nature of God and the work He is doing in and through that body, under the authority of established leaders who center the body on the truth of God and guard it against distraction and alternative purposes. Establishing a church is the process of putting all these guidelines into place and fulfilling them, leading to the spiritual maturity of the body and its members. Our flexibility within them is necessary to engage with where God has us and who He has put into the body, and we should try to mold our systems to our context rather than being ruled by the systems we’ve inherited. But these guidelines are to be respected both as a direction to aim and as boundaries to what we cannot do; the body of Christ can no more tolerate a lack of leadership or the presence of bad leadership than our mortal bodies can tolerate cancer. We can bend within the principles described by Paul, but cannot break or try to escape them.

1. It is endlessly amusing to me, personally, that He puts this particular group of people, including a tax collector and a zealot with the two hot-headed sons of Zebedee and whatever Thomas has going on, into one room and essentially tells them to play nice for a little bit until the Spirit comes and then leaves them there for ten days.
2. That is, every movement within Christianity that holds to the core truths of the faith that have been accepted as orthodox from the time of the apostles; this is not a statement on the validity of every practice carried out by such denominations.
3. This is, in fact, one of the core reasons I do not consider my sotieriology as a fundamentally Calvinist or Arminian one; both views ultimately attempt to answer the question of how God elects individuals unto salvation. I, however, believe that God has elected a class unto salvation. That is, the Father has elected Christ and therefore all who are in Christ receive the benefits of election, but these have not been individually elected at all.
4. The exception here is the house order itself, that is, the broad normative structures of the church that are detailed in scripture. These will be covered in some more detail under the purview of the other two guideline areas.
5. So far as we can understand it.

Note: This is adapted from a paper written as part of my studies at the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed an advanced biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church and the instructions (i.e. “house order”) by which each local church is to abide."

In my last post, I argued that submission to roles within the body, and allowing those roles to be defined by Christ rather than purely pragmatic or social demands, was a crucial element of aligning our churches with the design found in scripture. That our practices needed to be primarily defined in light of the community of faith Christ is building rather than personal interests or cultural norms. Here, we turn our attention to what that looks like in practice. This primarily arises in two categories; first, the specified roles that exist within the church, and second, how those roles interact in key circumstances as part of the life of the church.

The actual roles within the house order in scripture fall into a series of nested dualities that ultimately reflect the relationship between God the Father and God the Son to varying degrees. The Father is the supreme and perfect authority; all things are in subjection to Him, and He carries out His authority in pure love. The Son is the perfect agent of the Father’s will, doing all He does in submission to the Father and joyfully glorifying the Father through His every word and deed. In all of this, the Holy Spirit unites and glorifies, participating in and highlighting the love that exists within the Trinity and pointing to both the Father and the Son in all things.

The relationship that exists within the Trinity is fundamentally one of love, in which the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and there is no partiality or brokenness in these loving bonds. The three are one, truly one, such that we worship but one God in three persons. No person of the Trinity is lacking in anything, not even honor or power. The Father is not more God than the Spirit or the Son; every person of the Trinity is fully God and, therefore, fully empowered and worthy of all praise. The roles within the Trinity define the interpersonal relationships within divinity, but do not elevate or denigrate any person to any position other than True God.

This is the defining nature of the roles of the church. Every role within the church is engaged in presenting an image of this Trinity relationship, and every interaction among the body of the church is to display the pure love and true bond found among the persons of the Trinity. We must have this understanding in place if we are to carry out these roles correctly; we cannot emulate that which we do not know. We must also recognize the limits of our understanding and of our roles. We cannot perfectly understand God, or at least, if we shall ever perfectly understand Him it will not be on this side of eternity. We cannot perfectly practice the love of the Trinity within our own bodies, as we are not perfect agents of love while yet in these bodies. No roles within the church are perfect images of the divine nature, for a multitude of reasons, but a key one that warrants mention before we continue is that there is no role in the church that has absolute authority the way the Father does. Every leader in the church is also a servant, as Christ noted when He said,

Yet, we are to strive to have our image of the Father and the Son, empowered by the Spirit, grow ever more perfect. The way we live out our roles should be growing in a manner that always looks a little more like the Divine Household than it did before, always makes the love of the Trinity more clear to each other and the watching world. So let us bear this perfect love that we strive to emulate in mind as we consider the images we have been given.

I mentioned that this will be a study of nested dualities, so allow me to explain that before we examine the content of those dualities. First, note that our images are not trinities; there is no agent in our study here that emulates the Holy Spirit, but rather, the dualities discussed are empowered by that same Holy Spirit Himself. He is in all and through all that we do as believers in Christ, He is the One that binds us to Christ and each other, and He is the one who ultimately takes our dualities and uses them to point higher to the Father and the Son. As such, He will not be directly discussed through much of this article, as the rest of it will focus on the roles themselves, but it is vital to understand that nothing that follows this paragraph can exist in any true, holy, and workable form without His hand upon it. He is the vital role that makes all other roles exist, and it is His pleasure to avoid direct praise in favor of pointing beyond Himself to the Father and the Son in all things; so shall it be in this article.

Second, a note about terminology. I do not mean to describe a duality as a pagan may use the term; these are not sets of equal but opposite forces that find their purest expression in appropriate balance. Rather, they are two pictures that, taken together, present a larger picture. There are ways they are equal and ways they are not, but in a healthy church environment, they are never at odds. Fulfilling our roles well means that we are separate only so that we can be seen as united. A unity without parts is not a unity at all, but a single thing; for our images to work in a way that displays unity, then, there must be parts1. In God’s design, these parts are arranged in pairs that nest within and relate to one another.

While not every duality here will get equal weight of discussion in this paper, these are the essential ones for consideration as we move forward. The relationship between God the Father and God the Son is the template, and each will be listed in that order (that is, the member imaging the Father will be listed before the member imaging the Son). The primary dualities are the Son and the Church, the Church and the Home, and the Church and the World. Within the church is the duality of Leaders and Congregation, and within the leadership are the Elders and the Deacons. Within the home are the Family and the Servants, within the family are the Parents and the Children, and within the parents are the Husband and the Wife. Lacking some element here is not utterly devastating; a household without servants, for instance (which is most of them now), simply lacks that role. We are concerned here with how those roles work together to image God, not any debate about whether or not every role needs to exist in every place where it can exist2.

Christ is the head of the church, as the Father is the head of the Trinity. Christ’s relationship to the church images the Father’s relationship to the Son, in that Christ has supreme authority over the church, and carries out this authority in loving relationship. As the Trinity never operates in a manner in which the Father is not in authority, so the church is not designed to ever operate outside of the authority of Christ.

Likewise, the church is designed to operate with leadership in place that has the power to direct its operations and carry out church discipline. This leadership does not have ultimate authority; leaders of the church submit to Christ as Christ submits to the Father, and serves the body as Christ has served the church in His laying down His life for it. This was discussed in more detail elsewhere, but essentially, a church cannot be a church until it has leadership, specifically because it cannot perform its essential duties or maintain its adherence to Christ without trained leaders who point to Christ in their own deeds and in the relationship they have to the rest of the church body. Similarly, the church cannot be a church without a body that submits to the authority of the leadership as the church submits to Christ, since it is the body that carries out the work of the church in the world as the church carries out the work of Christ in the world and Christ carries out the work of the Father in the world.

Within the leadership are elders and deacons, the two offices defined in scripture for the governance of the church. Together, they are the leadership addressed in the paragraph above. But they have distinction between themselves, and within that distinction, the elders set direction as the Father sets direction for the Son (and as the Son sets direction for the church), and the deacons carry out the will of church leadership through service to the body as Christ carries out the will of the Father through His service rendered to the church (and as the church carries out the will of Christ).

Part of the work of church leaders is to direct the regular life of the church. This means that it is church leadership that ultimately calls and leads meetings of the assembled church body. The leadership keeps order at the assembled meetings, points all that happens to Christ, and carries out the essential functions of equipping and establishing the body. The congregation, then, follows the order as established by the leaders and submits to biblical teaching and direction as it is delivered during their times of assembly. Elders are described by Paul as having an ability to teach, because it is part of the fundamental nature of church leadership to pass on the knowledge and will of Christ to the body.

Relationships within the body are intended to showcase the patient love of Christ, as well as the importance of the church’s mission, at all times. As such, Christ gives us direction in Matthew to approach one another about sin and disputes in a manner that gives the offender multiple opportunities to repent and make things right, with increasing support from the church. When this process is not fruitful, however, Paul operates on the understanding that it is the leadership of the church that holds the authority to discipline the wayward member. Gilliland argues that this responsibility is a natural expression of the patient love expressed in the Matthew process when he says, “The Christian who lapses into unchristian behavior requires patience, much teaching, and genuine caring and love. The discipline of the Christian church must be the work of those who have a truly pastoral heart.”3 That is, the heart that qualifies one for church leadership is the same heart needed to practice discipline within the church in a manner that respects the offender and emphasizes the proper mindset of the church toward the offense.

Disruption of these relationships, then, not only alters the practices of the church, but corrupts the image the church is meant to be displaying. If the deacons operate as elders, or the body operates without leadership, or the elders fail to submit to Christ or serve the body, then the essential function of the church—as the manifested glory of God in the world tasked with carrying out the redemptive mission of Christ—falls apart.

The affairs of the Christian home are subject to the affairs of the Christian church. As God the Father sets the course of divine work and God the Son carries that work out in the world, so the church delivers its mission to the home, which then carries out that work. The home displays the same relationship within its neighborhood and direct connections that the church displays within its community. Thus, the structure of one informs the other; as Banks notes that “those who belong to [local church communities] should see one another primarily as members of a common family,” highlighting that the church operates in the same manner as a home, and the home operates in the same manner as the church.4

The home, similarly, has offices, and there are specific elements of church life that happen within the home. The finances of the church, for instance, come from the finances donated through the homes; if the homes within the church do not understand their responsibility to support the work of the church with their resources, and do not graciously and joyfully give of their resources to the God who provides for them, the church will find itself lacking and struggling to afford its basic tasks. This then cycles back into the homes, as the church is called to provide for any among them who are lacking. This is seen in the creation of the office of Deacons, whose first task was to oversee the support of widows, and James 1:27 reminds readers that concern for widows and orphans is a crucial element in the life of the church and the believer. As those homes with resources give those resources to the church, the church has the means to provide those resources to the homes that lack. In this way, the relationship between the church and the home is not only reflective of each other, but cyclical in practice, much like the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son.

In Ephesians 6, Paul describes various relationships within the home and shows the image of the Father/Son relationship in them. Servants (or slaves in some renderings) submit to the authority of their masters as Christ submits to the Father, not merely in grudging action but in sincerity, while the masters are commanded to treat their servants with a sincere and respectful heart that mirrors the way the Father directs the Son. Children are called to honor their parents, while the parents (namely the fathers) are called to a mindfulness in how they raise up their children without unnecessary provocation.

But these are presented in light of the longer text (Ephesians 5:22-33) before it, which details the relationship of the husband to the wife. Paul explicitly states the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship repeatedly throughout this section, pointing husbands to the part of Christ and wives to the role of the church. He points to the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church as a normative expectation for the love of a husband for his wife, framing the submission of the wife as a healthy response of a woman enjoying the grace and support her husband shows her rather than the fearful response of a woman under the command of an abusive or demanding husband. In this way, also, the marriage images the church, where the husband encourages the growth of the wife toward her full potential in faith in the same manner as Christ builds up the church and calls it to growth toward its full potential in faith.

Incidentally, it is the image-bearing nature of the marriage relationship that sorts out a number of questions the church receives about other gender-related issues. By lacking the interplay between a man and a woman, a same-sex marriage is incapable of displaying the same image as a man married to a woman, and therefore the marriage displays a false (or at least incomplete) picture of the relationships it is meant to display. The role of elders within the church in their relationship to deacons, serving the same functional role in its image duality as husbands to wives, is sensibly limited to men, while the role of deacons is not.

Note, however, that this overall structure does dictate when and where the church has authority in the home. The relationship of the church and home is essentially big-picture; the church gives direction to the home, but the relationships within the home dictate how that direction is actually carried out. The elders do not have authority to replace the role of parents in the lives of children, but do have a requirement to hold the parents accountable to whether or not their parenting actually serves the greater mission of the church. The church cannot tell the wife whether or not she’s allowed to work out of the home, as this is a matter that falls within the means of the home governing itself; but must ask stern questions of the husband if the wife isn’t growing in her walk with Christ, as this would suggest a breakdown in his role to support her growth as Christ supports the growth of the church. Ultimately, each relationship being described falls under the broad direction of the relationship in which it is nested, but retains some autonomy in its actual practice. Which sets us up to discuss the final category of relationship relevant to our topic.

If Christ has conquered the forces of this world and begun to establish His rule, and the church is His agent in the world the way Christ is the Father’s agent, then that implies a relationship between the church and the world that grants the church a certain amount of authority. However, since the world is not yet fully under the rule of Christ, it cannot be expected to operate as though it is. Note that the world does not have instructions in scripture regarding the church that mirror the instructions wives have regarding husbands or that the church body has regarding its leadership. This is at least a little bit practical; a world in rebellion against God is not going to submit to the commands of scripture simply because those commands come from God. So what does that mean for how we approach the relationship between the church and the world?

First, note that the church is called to be above reproach from the world; 1 Peter 3 and Romans 13, for instance, urge that the behavior of the church toward the world be pure and unblemished by evil, with the intention that the world sees the goodness of God and responds in faith. Compare this with the call of elders to be above reproach in 1 Timothy and the role of husbands as faithfully and lovingly guiding their wives to greater knowledge of and faith in Christ. In this way, the church leads the world toward God, even if only by example.

Second, our showing loving guidance toward the world is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is. We are called repeatedly to lay down our rights or lives, if needed, in service to pointing the world around us to Christ. We are to rejoice in trials, accept any trouble brought to us for doing good (while striving to have no trouble brought to us for doing evil, that is, avoiding such trouble by avoiding doing evil), and recognize the authority of the world so far as it exists.

This last part is essential; there are areas where earthly authorities really do have authority, and we as the church show our submission to God through our submission in these areas. Where the laws of man call for taxes, or honor, or participation in civil engagement, to the degree that those things do not compromise the mission of the church, we are to render what is being demanded. Homes, essentially, have dual citizenship. They are subject to the church, and they are subject to earthly authority. Where these things clash, a Christian home must submit primarily to the church; where they do not, a Christian home must be faithful to both.

Every relationship within the church, then, is always engaging with the world. And in its engagements with the world, each must seek to point to Christ in all things, to glorify Him in their dealings with each other and the world, and to practice their relationships as images of the patient love that exists between the Father and the Son. By recognizing how each relationship in the life of a Christian reflects the other relationships, and looking at each as images of the divine love within the Trinity, we can more readily understand the nature of our roles and how to faithfully live them out.

1 Not that God has parts, but He does have persons. These are not separate in the way that we as individuals are separate, but they are distinct in a way that allows them to have unity in relationship. We are, in all respects, imperfect images; this is merely one way in which our lacking points to His fullness.

2 Some roles are more necessary than others, but this is not a matter for this paper.

3 Gilliland, Dean S. “Growth & Care of the Community: Discipline and Finance.” From Pauline Theology & Mission Practice, 237–246. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. 243.

4 Banks, Robert. “The Community as a Family.” From Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting, 52–61. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. 54.

We cannot adequately define a biblical understanding of the philosophy that is to drive the ministry of the church without first untangling ourselves from the model we have inherited. We often take for granted that the elements of our church gatherings as we've always known them are innate to the nature of church--that these elements exist by virtue of it being a 'church,' and not as a conscious choice on our part or the part of our predecessors. We see this in practice across many spheres of Christian experience; it is the foundational assumption that drives missionaries to establish churches that look just like their home churches even when that model doesn't connect with the local culture, that caused so many in the United States to declare that the government was forbidding church when it was explicitly only forbidding a specific manner of gathering in crowds, that causes people to push back and ultimately malign pastors who attempt to update mundane practices or habits of their church with an eye toward greater gospel faithfulness and public witness. Church-as-we-know-it easily becomes enshrined in our minds as church-as-Christ-intended it, even if the thing we're fighting to maintain was only added to the life of the local church one generation earlier.

It is important to think critically about the things we've come to see as defining elements of the church, asking whether these elements actually arise from a Biblical model of the church structure and, if not, asking where they originate. Being extrabiblical does not mean that an element is wrong, simply that it is cultural; cultural elements have their place in the life of the church, it simply isn't a foundational place. As such, we have to identify the major areas in which we have allowed extrabiblical sources to define the ministry of the church, how those sources have drawn us away from a biblical understanding, how to correct that shift, and where possible, how to use those sources in service to the biblical philosophy rather than allowing them to serve as an alternative to it. In our class time, we identified three major extrabiblical philosophies that have replaced that philosophy described by Paul and the other apostles in whole or in part. These were individualism, egalitarianism, and theocratic systems.

A theocracy is, by definition, a term describing a government structure, and therefore not an intuitive element to discuss in a paper like this. However, I am convinced that the theocratic model has done widespread damage to the structure of the modern church, and that we cannot realign with the biblical model of ministry without addressing that damage.

Theocratic systems are those where the seat of government is tied to, and presumably defined by, a religious order. I say ‘presumably’ because I believe an honest review of history would show that the civil system has, in every instance, done some degree of redefining the religious system as part of the act of integrating it. It is this alteration and integration that has crept into our churches as a model of ministry alien to the teachings of scripture. For Christianity, this process began with Constantine and has carried on through the political weight of the Vatican, state churches such as Russian Orthodoxy and the Church of England, and attempted sanctification of secular bodies such as the workings of the Religious Right.

In every instance, the church has adapted itself to the workings of the civil structures it is attempting to command. These structures rely on bureaucratic systems, so the church adopts bureaucratic systems. These structures exist to justify the will of the government as a civil ordinance, so the church begins aligning itself to justify the will of the government as a divine ordinance. With these and other similar changes, the church structure shifts, and over time, we have come to expect that this is the normative, traditional structure for a church to have. To the point where, when I was at a previous Baptist college, I was taught a six-page list of church committees as though they were, every one, a necessary element to any true Christian church!

As we discussed in class, it may not be necessary to actually dismantle every element of the church that has arisen through this process. Some have proven helpful in certain places and times, and some have become so ingrained into our culture that we would sacrifice ability to connect with the culture around us if we abandoned it altogether. But aligning with the biblical model of ministry does require that we are willing to dismantle every theocratic element that has taken root in our church structures. That is, every element of our church structure, even (perhaps especially) those we have taken for granted as inherent to the nature of the church itself, must be open to examination and subject to removal if it is found lacking.

The standard by which these structures are to be examined is that which has arisen through the process of this paper. Every element of our church structure, every line in the liturgy, every node on the organizational chart, every title, every piece of lingo, every expectation and requirement, every single aspect of our idea of the church must be held to a standard that looks to God. We must be willing to ask if this piece is ordained by God, whether it serves or detracts from His mission, whether it helps or hinders our growth in Him, whether it glorifies Him or ourselves, whether it is inherent to the roles God has ordained or attempts to redefine the roles to serve our ends, whether it maintains the unity of the church community and the family structures, and whether it is something that is actually necessary or something to which we have grown accustomed. The biblical model of ministry, then, is one in which we operate in service to God, for His glory, aimed at His mission, serving in the roles He has defined as He has defined them, without corruption from alternative goals.

Ultimately, all of these questions come down to one core: is this element of our ministry being done in service to God by His ordinance, or in service to anything else and/or by any other standard? In order to operate within the biblical model of ministry, we must be willing to take anything—no matter how important to us—that falls into the latter category, redeem what can be redeemed, and throw out whatever cannot.

What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "designed a set of guidelines that could be used for a mission program anywhere that is aligned with an advanced understanding of biblical keys, including the role of local churches networking with other churches and mission agencies/apostolic teams as taught in Acts."

Formatting note: As last week, I have chosen to leave this in bullet format partly because it seems to work for the objective and partly because I am currently plagued by the same recurring headaches that made me write it as bullet points in the first place.

Our church is going through this lesson series, and we're currently in a section where we're talking about the church and the function of the church and how members should relate to the church. It's pretty good stuff, and has been very helpful for us in refocusing our priorities and determining what's next for us. The passage above was the heart of last night's lesson, and we spent a good while talking about it and exploring what it means and how it relates to the lesson series at large and how its context informs that understanding, and something specific really popped out to me in the midst of that conversation and reading. It's about where we center our priorities and sense of purpose.

Note the passage that opened this article. It's part of a larger discussion on living lives that honor God, but note the communal nature of it. Throughout Ephesians chapters 4 & 5, Paul constantly ties the things he's saying to a group context. He talks about "bearing one another in love" (4:2), "equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ" (4:12); tells us to "SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE OF YOU WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, because we are parts of one another" (4:25), "be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you" (4:32), "walk in love" (5:2). Why? So that we, "being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love" (4:16).

See, the thing is, it's easy for us to think about our involvement in the body in terms that focus on us as individuals. We so often talk about the Christian life as though we are solitary cups that need to sit alone to be refilled, and then we can bless others with the excess that pours out of us. Or as batteries, that get plugged into the body to give it what energy we have, but then have to be unplugged and sent to recharge so we have something to bring when we return. And there is a certain sense in which this is true; we all have our own lives and we bring to the body that which is unique about us. We do not, however, primarily grow in isolation. When the New Testament addresses the Christian life, it addresses bodies of believers. It addresses churches, and expects them not only to grow together, but to grow because they are together. We do not grow in isolation any more than a finger can grow when separated from the body. Our priority, if we are to be the body we have been called to be, must be other-focused.

Allow me to paint a different picture.

The study we're doing has a section where it cites various scholars talking about the passage at hand. One of those scholars was Howard Snyder, and in the midst of his statement from The Community of the King he quotes Karl Barth (from Bromiley's translation of Church Dogmatics) as saying, "I can edify myself only as I edify the community." This stood out to me as distinct from the way I've been taught to think of edification, but aligned well with how scripture treats the subject. But what does it mean to be edified only as we edify the community? What does it mean to grow only as we grow together?

The image that came to my mind as we discussed it last night was one of a circuit board. See, the parts of the circuit work specifically because they're connected. They all do different things and they serve the whole in different ways and maybe even at different times, but they are all part of the same circuit. And being part of the same circuit is not only preferred, it is required. The thing about body analogies (which, admittedly, was probably the best image available to Paul at the time) is that it's easy to note that the eye can continue to work as designed even if the hand has been cut off; but this isn't true of the church, and it isn't true of a circuit. In the case of the hand, the hand suffers complete loss by being separated from the body, and the body suffers the loss of a single function but continues on working in general. In the case of a circuit, breaking the circuit at any point shuts the whole operation down. The pieces are interdependent. It doesn't matter how close an LED is to the power source, if the circuit is broken at a missing transistor twenty connections away, the circuit is broken, and the light will not shine.

The church is not a collection of individuals, each empowered by the Holy Spirit and thus made greater than the sum of its parts when brought together. The church is a circuit, with each part energized by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is energizing the whole. He does live in us individually, and unlike a circuit component we can learn some in private reading and prayer, but the design for us as Christians and the way we are expected to function is as a community, working together and supporting one another in all that we do. We must prioritize the ways we connect and help keep the circuit working over our private edification if we're ever going to be effective at the mission. My phone will not work properly, will not have any ability to serve its purpose well, if I started taking pieces out of the motherboard. If I expected the components to do their work apart from the whole.

In what ways are we prioritizing ourselves over our communities? In what way can we put the health and mission of the church as higher than our own personal calling, and align our lives to serve in the way we're designed? Are we taking seriously that we are a part of a whole, and have we considered what that means for the way we spend our time, the way we exercise our gifts, the way we relate to one another?