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Note: The following is adapted from a paper originally submitted as part of my coursework through the Antioch School. The assigned called for me to demonstrate that I had "developed a basic 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."  Photo by Clotaire Folefack on Unsplash 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.
At its core, individualism is a philosophical model that centers its view of the world on individual human beings as standalone units and arbiters of reality and experience. It is fundamentally a bottom-up ideology, in which the individual is the basis of all things and groups are valid only to, and must be continually redefined by, the extent that they serve the interests of individuals within them. There are benefits to it that should be acknowledged; for instance, it forces organizations and structures to consider the effect they are having on real people under their influence and take those effects into consideration. This is a good lens with which to examine these organizations and structures, as human beings are image-bearers of God and therefore deserving of the baseline respect of avoiding harm wherever possible. The problem, however, is that it isn’t suitable as a foundational ideology. This is because, by design, allowing it to be foundational requires that the structure and practices of the church be fluid in ways that the Bible does not prescribe or condone. A church defined by individualism exists primarily to serve its members in a manner that is subject to their every whim. In fact, this goes even farther, in that an individualistic view ultimately attempts to stand in judgment of reality and its Creator. Consider what has come to be known as The Problem of Pain. Essentially, this argument claims that, because humans experience suffering, God must be imperfect either in His morality or His power. But this entire argument relies on the claim that individual humans are the chief end of existence, and therefore benefit to individual humans is the ultimate moral good that warrants the full application of God’s power in all instances. This is individualism not only redefining the church, but redefining mankind and God Himself in the process. The biblical model, however, centers God as the focus and ultimate beneficiary of creation (including mankind) in general and the church in particular. The members are in the body to serve God; submitting to His structure, serving on His mission, practicing His methods, and aiming for the work He has determined, all for His glory. Paul says as much in his description of individual roles when he tells the Colossians, “whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (3:23-24, NASB95). Christianity is, therefore, a top-down structure. God is ultimate, His will defines the structures that will serve His purposes, and individuals operate in submission to those structures in service to Him.1
At its core, egalitarianism is a view that considers roles and individuals as essentially interchangeable. Under an egalitarian mindset, there are no inherent limitations or criteria on who does what in a given system. There are often imposed limitations acknowledged within an egalitarian model, which we will get to briefly, but first a note is necessary. This is that ‘egalitarianism’ is not here being contrasted with complementarianism; this section will be focusing on the nature of roles within the church, rather than the content of those roles. That is, it is more important for the scope of this paper to understand how roles exist and interact than to understand who occupies those roles and what they individually do for the church. While part of the class reading included passages that discuss specific roles as divided by gender and age, it is my belief that these specific instructions are a result of the biblical philosophy of church ministry rather than the source of it, and are therefore not crucial to the question at hand.2 Egalitarianism is a fundamentally pragmatic ideology, and it isn’t necessarily bad at achieving pragmatic ends. This is evidenced by the way egalitarianism is argued for in most circumstances. The basic line of reasoning tends to be that acknowledging an inherent limitation or criteria to a role excludes people who can perform that work as well or better than the people who are actually in that role. And this isn’t false, but it also isn’t grounds for determination about a role within the biblical concept of church ministry. That is, if the sole determinant for roles within the church was its effectiveness at completing a task, then egalitarianism would be a valid way to understand those roles, but this isn’t true. The reason for this is that the work of church ministry isn’t primarily about results, but about submission. As stated in the previous point, the whole work of the church is about God’s glory, will, and mission. Roles within the body, then, must be defined by how they serve that end. Roles are part of the structure that is defined by God, and God alone, in His ultimate wisdom, has the means to determine their criteria and limitations. As it happens, the design God has chosen as the means to best bring Him glory and serve His ends is one in which the church community and the household carry the same, or mirrored, roles. This is, as Clark puts it, partly because “early Christians wanted family and community to support and reinforce one another.”3 He then goes on to argue that, due to this intended relationship, divorcing one from the other—the community roles and the family roles—would undermine them both. When Paul is defining the roles within a household, he is necessarily also defining the roles within the church. When he defines the roles within the church, he is by necessity defining the roles within the family. In both cases, he relates the matter back to how it stems from and reflects the truth of God, either by explicit statement of the connection as in Ephesians 5:32, or by a more implicit reminder that he is applying a truth as in 1 Corinthians 14:33. In all things, the roles must be defined and practiced in the manner God has chosen because each role, and their relationships to one another, fundamentally say something about God. It is more crucial, in the biblical model of church ministry, that this image be as accurate as possible than that the role is functioning at a high level of efficiency. These roles, as described in scripture, create a community and family that operate from an interplay between leadership and submission that displays the relationship between the church and God as well as relationships within the Godhead. This is, fundamentally, the point; the roles serve not simply to achieve goals, as egalitarianism would view them, but to display truth. The role of husbands and how it engages within the household, with its authority and accountability, displays and applies the essential principles that define the elders and how they engage with the church, which in turn display and apply the principles that define how the Godhead engages with the church and God the Father engages with the Godhead. The wife, subject to the husband but in a position of authority within the household, images the role of a deacon as it leads and serves the church, which images the church as it sits subject to Christ but is the means of Christ’s authority manifesting in the world, which images Christ in perfect submission to the Father while holding authority to send the Spirit and lead the church. Children, in honoring and serving under the authority of parents, image the body of the church under the authority of its leaders, which images the church in full subjection to God, which is empowered by and images the Holy Spirit who operates in subjection to the Father and the Son and seeks the honor of both. It is natural for us to impose a hierarchy on these roles, due to the habits we’ve developed that will be explored in the next section, but this reading isn’t natural to the text. A husband serving as a deacon with living parents will find themselves needing to hold all these images in tension, with one shining through more clearly in different contexts. Being a husband does not mean one can shirk the submission inherent to being a member of the church body simply because he holds authority in the home. Egalitarianism, then, would have us replace the intention of the roles with the utility of the roles, and by doing so, redefine not only the roles themselves but the statement those roles are making about who God is. It therefore cannot be treated as a definitive grounds for how we approach roles within the church or the family, but that isn’t the same as saying it can have no use to the church. Egalitarianism, appealed to in a limited fashion and always in service to the biblical model of ministry, does serve as a reminder to analyze whether a criteria and limitation we have come to expect is actually inherent to the role, or has been artificially placed there by mankind. It points us back to the actual definition of the role, and the will of its Definer, as the sole arbiter on whether or not a given person can serve in that role. Allow me to draw this out in an example. A well-crafted and powerful sermon that stirs the hearts of people but brings glory to the speaker is, by definition, an inferior sermon to one delivered through stutters and awkward pauses that points the hearers to behold the glory of God. No one would doubt that the former is a more skilled orator than the latter, and for this reason, pure pragmatism and egalitarianism would put him in the pulpit on those grounds alone. There is no reason not to in that model, and a host of arguments for efficiency to support the move. However, the biblical model of ministry would undeniably demand that place be reserved for the latter, since he more faithfully serves the role with a heart that seeks to glorify God. Egalitarianism in service to the biblical model would remind us that the latter is preferable even if he has not attended seminary and the former speaker has. This does not mean the latter should avoid growing his skill in the craft of sermon delivery, it merely addresses whether or not he should occupy that role at all.
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. 1 Or in rebellion against those structures, as is the case for those who are not in Christ.
2 A proper understanding of how these roles are to be filled and what they are to do is necessary for the application of this philosophy, however—in fact, I would argue they exist in scripture specifically as direct application of it—and while this is a fact that warrants mention, it does not change the fundamental claims of this paper. 3 Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of the Scripture and the Social Sciences (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980), 134.
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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