March 07, 2014
Body Makeover
I’m still chewing on why a congregation
would forgo Biblical leadership and choose to be directed by a steering
committee. Scripture gives elders the charge of directing the affairs of the
church and that position excludes women. It occurs to me that instituting a
steering committee as the authority in a church might be a clever way to put
women in leadership roles. After all, who could possibly object to women
serving, or even being the chair of a steering committee? Unfortunately
manipulation of Biblical authority in many churches is getting more common
place and acceptable – women serve as priests and ministers, and homosexuals
are ordained. Clearly Jesus is the head of the church, but we can anticipate that
one of these days the church is going to experience an extreme body makeover.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Gail;
-----How right you are! How little does knowledge have to do with belief in the affairs of man! Even though the church is the body of Christ with Him as its head, it necessarily involves itself with the affairs of man, because it is man whom God assembles in it. Every man comes with his own bags packed full of affairs. We might think we should do a better job of dying with Christ. But Paul even tells us there is a line to this “death”: “Every one should remain in the state in which he was called.” (I Cor 7:20) Indeed, this is a bit of knowledge. But believing it must recognize the context of its being said. The murderer must not remain a murderer, nor the adulterer an adulterer, nor the homosexual a homosexual, but the slave can expect to remain a slave, the uncircumcised should remain uncircumcised, the husband should certainly remain a husband. Knowledge can only be knowledge within its proper place, and belief should only accept it there. Then knowing what place for knowledge is proper has everything to do with believing, and most everyone thinks they know what they know like they ought to know it. Though Paul says knowledge puffs up, of belief he says every man should be convinced in his own mind and that if he does what he does in faith he should not condemn himself, “….happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves. But he who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” (Rom 14:22b-23)
-----Every human is the intermingling of light and darkness. Certainly those who know the Lord have their spirits abiding in the light untangled from darkness, yet their bodies and minds and hearts are yet a mixture of life and death, light and darkness, truth and falsehood. The principle extends to the most basic elements of consciousness. Before our faces where our eyes see is light, no matter where we turn our heads, behind our heads is darkness, a visual void making its subtle effects upon our awareness. For every thought we have we lack masses of other thoughts. For every perception we get right, there are networks of misperceptions yet firing in our wiring. Man was made complete, but we have all grown up in a six thousand year old culture of good and evil swirling in eddies and whirlwinds like tornadoes twisted up at the clashing of hot and cold fronts.
-----What heart really belongs in the church? Which one is the wolf with knife and fork hidden in the wool? Which belongs but needs correction lest the body be corrupted? Whose attitudes spawn honor and respect and encouragement? What attitudes need elevated to there? In whom is the love and charity and sympathy flowing? And are avenues and places happening around them wherein they mix plenty with others in need? These are the affairs of the church.
-----But who is to say these things about other people? “…His gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” (Eph 4:11-13) Do not underestimate the power of God. To desire Him is to desire His righteousness. To the one who desires His righteousness He gives understanding and wisdom and discernment. His heart is set upon what is right and his judgments will follow what the Lord grows in him. Paul describes for Timothy and Titus some of the outward manifestations of this inward wisdom. And they are these who rightly handle the affairs of the church.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
-----But what is it to desire His righteousness, and why do so many people desiring His righteousness wind up with so many opposing ideas? Every person must sort the information in his own mind. This is what Paul meant by “Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” Part of fearing the Lord is to be convinced that the way I sort information sorts me. I can look for information which fits who I am, or I can look for that which fit’s the Lord. Be sure that you are not only the conscious layer of our mental activity. You are also the innumerable layers and systems of thinking and perceiving and feeling throughout all the depths of your sub-conscious. Lest there be sufficient self-control, these depths can be your steerage though you think and expect your conscious choices are. The decisions you make about things and the Word of God and their interrelationships will sort you out in the Lord’s presence even though you think it is you sorting out them.
-----So it is the woman elder reads, “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate,” (I Cor 14:33b-34) and somehow reasons this does not apply to women being elders. How does she reason? By mistake? God forgives errors. He must. “Let God be true though every man be false.” We are full of errors contradicting His Word. Without this forgiveness we are goners. So we have it, and it forgives her and the woman preacher as much as it forgives me for my errors, “that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10)
-----Surely we do not show forth His wisdom in our “stellar” behaviors. I would laugh at that idea when I finished vomiting because of it. His manifold wisdom shown forth at this pinnacle of His relationship to mortals rightly inclined can only be grace and mercy and forgiveness, for we do far more things calling such forth from Him than we do things calling for His praiseful applause. If it is by thought of His praising applause for us that we reason correctness where His Word states insubordination, then we are near to being sorted out as merely wearing the sheep’s clothing. It is the age old, near elusive skill of being obsessed with loving and knowing the Lord without becoming self-righteously trapped in misperception of the Lord.
-----It is my belief that the church has become trapped in much misperception of the Lord, thus displaying great fountains of self-righteousness. Evidence this by noting how fractured Christ’s body has become because it ignores one simple scripture, “I have applied all this to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brethren, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.” (I Cor 4:6) Yet I’m a Calvinist; No! I’m a Lutheran! No! I’m a Baptist! No! I’m a Seventh Day Adventist! No! I’m a Pentecostal! No! I’m a Presbyterian (I fully assure you I’m not, but others are.) No. I’m just a Christian. If I came close to following anyone, it would be Alexander Campbell. But I don’t follow men. I pick up His Word and do my erroneous best to follow it. And it is that I do not impeccably follow it although I totally desire such impeccability which adds to the showing of His manifold wisdom to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through His forgiving my errors, too.
-----So I also must be forbearing and forgiving of those making what I have learned from His Word to be errors. I can not sort these folks down to the fine line. And so I look a woman elder in the face knowing I might be looking upon a tare, but presuming I am looking upon forgiven wheat. As long as she keeps her “rule” to herself, and as long as I know no way of beneficially addressing her error, I will keep my faith between myself and the Lord. I will expect her to do the same. But should she expect me to move according to her rule I will have trouble keeping gentle and respectful the sparks that would fly.
-----I don’t believe elders are wrong for the church. The Word of God prescribes them. I don’t believe they are without authority. The Word of God gives it. Yet, by also being a context, the Word of God describes and limits that authority. I believe what today are considered “the affairs of the church” are not at all affairs for the elders’ rule. It isn’t the elders who rule which spiritual music is appropriate for the worship service. Paul says to sing spiritual songs and hymns to one another (Eph 5:19.) What? I’m going to express my heart to you and the Lord through the song some elder, worse yet: woman elder, tells me I can only sing? Who is anyone, elder or not, to get between me and my expression of love to my brothers and sisters and the Lord. If the bottom of my shoe were to read “KEDS”, then the seat of that ones pants would read “SDEK”! Nobody can tell another person through what to express his heart, lest that “what” be vile. Yet elders are ruling this forbidden zone and many others, too. Church has become a show instead of a life, and the elders have become directors instead of mentors. And herein lays all my criticism of today’s elders.
-----I think you are very right. Churches moving away from elders to steering committees have stepped beyond the common error of insulating the congregation’s misbehaviors from the elders’ true scriptural rule. Every error in the church is a step away from the Word. Our responses in those errors to the Word sort us out as running from the error, or running from the Word.
Post a Comment