February 12, 2007
New Law
In the proposed Bylaw changes for my church I find three curious requirements under the heading of Responsibilities of Members. 1. “Pledge of cooperation by serving with ones (sp) time, spiritual gifts, finances and energies with the body of believers at XYZ Church. 2. Diligence to preserve the unity of the body at XYZ Church. 3. Regular Prayer for the ministry, leadership, staff and members of XYZ Church.” Even though these entries may be desirable, they seem oddly out of place for inclusion in the Bylaws. Who determines the adequacy of a member’s time, gifts, finances and energies? Since praying regularly and preserving unity in the church are Scriptural teachings, does including them in the Bylaws make them more authoritative or any more enforceable?
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Gail;
-----I never like to be critical just for the sake of it. But when a thing does not hold up to the logical application of the Word of God, then I think criticism becomes necessary. So please forgive me if this seems a bit much, but I feel compelled by love to point out what the Word does not bear up. Of the three member responsibilities you discussed and observed as being desirable by themselves, by the light of the Word I find only one to be desirable by itself.
-----Regarding the pledge of cooperation, the concept of “pledge” is used nowhere in the Word of God as a requirement for membership in the body of Christ. It carries a specific connotation of an agreement which led to security being placed into the hands of a creditor, in most occurrences. When the term is removed from the context of the debtor/creditor relationship, it retains the sense of a particularly unilateral transaction. Of the two occurrences of the word in the NIV, one regards a list of widows that apparently was kept in the early church. In order to be in that listing, a woman had to maintain her widowhood, a quite unilateral transaction. The other occurrence involves the pledge of a good conscience toward God, which is baptism. The Bible creates no concept regarding a pledge of any kind to the church.
-----So also the concept of cooperation is little used in the New Testament regarding body life. The New Century Version uses the term cooperate twice in I Timothy and twice in Titus where three of those occurrences refer to women and children cooperating with the man of the house, and the fourth refers to those who refuse to cooperate - mainly those of the circumcision party.
-----What is wrong with these terms as criteria for membership in the church is that both carry a connotation of subservience to the church that the Bible does not make. Such a relationship is that of a greater (the church) operating over a lesser (the member). This connotation is not non-biblical, it is unbiblical. We are not called by the Bible into submission to the church. Go ahead, search the words “pledge”, “submit”, and “submission” in your Bible. You will find neither “pledge to the church“, “submit to the church”, nor “submission to the church“. What you will find is a lot of submit to the laws, submit to the governments, wives submit to husbands, children to parents, saints to the leaders, and everyone (including the leaders) to each other.
-----Submission is mutual within the body, not unilateral to the body. The concepts put forth by the Word are those of every member belonging to one another, every member being involved with one another (I Cor 12) . Rather than writing of a pledge of cooperation to the church, Paul writes about, “…all of you agree with one another…”, “…for we are all members of one body…” These are hardly the captivating concepts of pledging yourselves to cooperation with a church. Why would you suppose it is that way? The unilateral submission , the unilateral pledge, the subservience to the master is reserved for the individual’s submission to the Father through Jesus Christ. That relationship can not be messed with by the minds of other men no matter how much authority they claim to have over you. Always remember, Paul wrote, “Let us therefore do whatever makes for peace and to mutual edification,” and, “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up,” and, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” for the obedience of church leaders as well. So how can our cooperation be unilaterally pledged when the Word speaks so abundantly of mutual submission. If there had been mutual submission in your leaders’ church, the majority of its members would not have been driven away these past years in order for the leaders to have the church their own way (whether or not they imagined a vision from God.) Sincere submission to one another and agreement with one another is the only form of cooperation the Bible presents.
-----Regarding the responsibility of members to be diligent to preserve the unity of the body, notice that “of the body” is a possessive modifier of “unity”. In other words, that phrase is a definer that narrows the meaning of the broader concept of unity to that unity belonging to the body. Loosely speaking, this is a valid concept. Our family has a particular unity it has settled upon. So does yours. Those terms of unity existing in my family may not work as well in your family as does the terms of its unity. But corporate bylaws are not made of loosely understood statements. In as much as the unity referred to here is addressed as the possession of the church, the elders will be free to define its terms. And that is wrong, because the Bible has taken it upon itself to define the terms of unity.
-----Look in the Bible at all of the occurrences of unity with a possessive modifier. There is “unity of the Spirit” and “unity in the faith”. There is a state of being “perfectly united in mind and thought,” by all of you agreeing “with one another.” There is also a state of being “united in love.” And of course, there is the whole building “joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives.” Continue to search, if you wish, but you will not find in the Bible the concept of unity being a possession of any church body or group of leaders. The unity and mutual participation of the members in the body are of the Holy Spirit and His effects. The unity belongs to the direction of the Word of God as brought upon each soul by the Spirit of God. There has been given no ground for any church or church leader to interfere with the relationship any child of God has with His Father, unless of course that child is stumbling out of line with any principles clearly revealed by the Word of God itself. Not only have the elders NOT been given any opportunity to interfere with God’s relationships with His children in WHATEVER CHURCH THEY ATTEND, they are COMMANDED NOT TO, I Peter 5:1-3 and Philippians 2:3-5. The unity of the children does not belong to any church or group of men, even if God calls them “elders“. It belongs to the Holy Spirit. And it is for His direction through His Word and our obedience to it.
-----Now I think the one member responsibility that itself is desirable and Biblical is: “Regular Prayer for the ministry, leadership, staff and members of the XXC.” It is very obvious from this set of bylaws that they are all going to need a lot of prayer.
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