Don't Fire Your Church Members

The Case for Congregationalism

Jonathan Leeman

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781433686221
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Church membership is not just a status, it's an office. Leaders shouldn't fire members from the responsibilities given to them by Jesus—they should train them! When members are trained, the church grows in holiness and love, discipleship and mission. Complacency and nominalism are diminished. Jesus gives every church member an office in the church's government: to assume final responsibility for guarding the what and the who of the gospel in the church and its ministry. Similarly, Jesus gives leaders to the church for equipping the members to do this church-building and mission-accomplishing work. In our day, the tasks of reinvigorating congregational authority and elder authority must work together. The vision of congregationalism pictured in this book offers an integrated view of the Christian life. Congregationalism is biblical, but biblical congregationalism just might look a little different than you expect. It is nothing less than Jesus' authorization for living out his kingdom rule among a people on mission.

Chapter 1

Who’s In Charge of What Around Here?

As we saw in the introduction, some writers question whether there is a consistent pattern of polity in the New Testament documents. They also question whether any particular pattern, if one exists, is normative for churches today.21

The answers to these questions depend on how we read the Bible. For instance, how should we treat historical narrative? In Acts 14 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in a number of churches with prayer and fasting (vv. 21–23). Does that mean whoever appoints elders today must first pray and fast because Paul and Barnabas did? And what about the occasional nature of the Epistles? Do the polity implications of Paul’s directives to the Corinthians apply to us?

In the category of New Testament ethics more broadly, nearly everyone leaves some things in the first century. Theological conservatives assign instructions about holy kisses or head coverings to the category of relative or situation specific. Theological moderates place Paul’s injunctions against female leadership in the church into the same category. And liberals include his statements against homosexuality. The hermeneutical explanations for each decision are creative and diverse, but the point is that nearly everyone treats some ethical matters as universally binding and others as relative to time and place. If that is true in ethics, might the same be true for church polity?

Answering questions like these requires an institutional hermeneutic. The burden of this chapter is to explain how an institutional hermeneutic works so that we might better ascertain what’s normative and what’s not for polity from the pages of Scripture. Ultimately, I will argue that church polity is a subcategory of ethics and that whatever hermeneutical principles are used for Christian ethics should also be used for polity.

What Is an Institution?

First, what is an institution? An institution is a rule structure that shapes behavior and identity.22 It can be a set of rules or procedures, like the rules governing the handshake or a company’s hiring policy, or it can be an actual organization or polity, each of which itself is a fairly elaborate complex of rules and procedures.23 What’s more, an institution depends on a set of moral evaluations that govern a particular set of relationships and that are treated as relatively fixed.24

The topic of institutions is relevant to questions about the polity of a local church because the very existence of a local church depends on its institutional structure or polity. The difference between a local church and a group of Christians is nothing more or less than church polity. To argue for polity is to argue for the existence of the local church. That is not to say that polity only includes the local church—one must also account for the relationship between churches. It is to say, however, no polity or institutional structure, no local church.

All organizations and social groups possess some type of polity, some governing structure that constitutes the group and organizes its members, even if that structure is fairly minimal.25 To be “a people” or “a group” in any sense whatsoever, formal or informal, whether a nation-state, advertising agency, chess club, the high school cool-kids’ clique, or a church, means that some criteria exist for distinguishing members from non-members and that some rule structure guides behavior within the group. Indeed, these very rules constitute a group as a group: “All social groups are constituted by rules. Even the very simplest social group consists of a collection of people bound together by shared rules—though the rules may be so basic, so elemental, that members of the group may be unaware of them.”26

To put it the other way round, a “group” with no institutional structure—no polity—is not in fact a group. If there are no criteria for membership, no rules for governing behavior, no self-conscious sense of shared identity, no common purpose or guiding objective, then there is no group. There is just a bunch of individuals. Social rules and social groups are inextricably connected: “Groups can only exist where they are constituted by social rules. But, conversely, social rules can only exist in the context of a social group, a group defined by—at minimum—their common acceptance of the rule, coupled with an awareness of their common acceptance.”27

It is fairly common in the West today to object to institutions or the institutional life; but in fact, our lives are infiltrated with countless institutions, and we could scarcely live socially without them. Without institutions there would be little regularity or predictability in social interactions, little ability to distinguish the valuable and the harmful among groups of any size, little chance for reciprocating loyalty and trust among anyone but one’s closest friends and family.28 Society won’t work without institutions, not even a society of angels. To strip a society of institutions would be to remove all fixed rules, traditions, and moral evaluations and to abandon that society’s social life to nothing but personal preference, prejudiced desire, and short-term calculations.

How then do we read the Bible institutionally? How do we discern which biblical institutions are normative?

Five Rules for an Institutional Hermeneutic

1. Ask Who Is Authorized to Do What

The natural assumption of fallen humans, and especially autonomy-loving moderns, is that people have the freedom to do whatever they please—at least until someone comes along and draws a boundary. The “state of nature” story of origins of classical liberalism, for instance, begins with the presumption of individual human authority—executive authority—that the individual may or may not consent to give to the state. There is a presumption of freedom and autonomy until someone says no.

The pragmatic posture of many church leaders begins with this same basic assumption. It views church leaders as broadly free to govern churches and organize church gatherings as best suits the moment. There are a few boundaries about what churches should not do, but otherwise it’s over to prudence and ingenuity to answer questions like, What is the balance of powers between elders and members? Can there be an executive cabinet of elders? When does the congregation get a vote, if it does at all? What should membership practices look like? Should we even practice membership? How does evangelism work? Or missions? What should churches do when they gather?

The starting point for an institutional hermeneutic is very different. It begins with the assumption that humans have no authority except where God gives it. Nicholas Wolterstorff, following Abraham Kuyper, observes, “Authority is something one has, not something one is.”29 It is always an office that humans step into for the sake of performing a certain action. It must be given, and the giver always specifies authority’s jurisdiction and purposes.

For instance, do humans have authority to take a spouse and produce children? Yes, God gives it in Genesis 1 and 2.

Do humans have authority to build houses, landscape their back yards for accommodating guests, write music, embed that music in MP3 tracks, and throw parties? Yes, God gives it in Genesis 1:28.

Do humans have the authority to eat a fruit and vegetable spread at that party? Yes, God says so in Genesis 1:29.

Do they have authority to eat meatballs on toothpicks and shrimp cocktail at the party? Yes, God provides it in Genesis 9:3.

In short, humanity has been authorized to do a lot. But the point is, humans—vessels shaped out of clay—have absolutely no freedom, no entitlement to do anything, not even pick an apple off a tree and eat it, until God so authorizes. Lumps of clay have no rights. Martin Luther observed, “For when any man does that for which he has not the previous authority or sanction of the Word of God, such conduct is not acceptable to God, and may be considered as either vain or useless.”30 Jeremiah speaks more severely: “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way” (5:30–31, NIV).

If the starting point for an institutional hermeneutic is that humans must be authorized, the main purpose of an institutional hermeneutic is to answer the question, Who is authorized to do what? In colloquial terms, Who’s in charge of what around here?

Legal theorists distinguish between “mandatory rules” and “power-conferring rules.”31 Mandatory rules are commands, as in “Worship the Lord your God” or “You shall not steal.” Power-conferring rules are commissions, as in “Fill the earth and subdue it” or “You are to me a royal priesthood” or “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven” or “Go into all nations preaching and baptizing” or “Serve as overseers.” Power-conferring rules tend to establish a vocation or an office. Mandatory rules tend to establish the boundaries or rules of that vocation or office. The mandatory rule “You shall not murder” delimits the power-conferring rule “Have dominion.”

An institutional hermeneutic is particularly interested in such power-conferring commissions because they set trajectories and establish ultimate goals. So it looks for these identity- and behavior-shaping rule structures that might be described in one passage, but whose jurisdictions extend into subsequent passages.

Seeing this difference between mandatory rules and power-conferring rules helps one recognize that moral evaluation and governance is much more than making sure people don’t cross a specific set of boundaries. Rather, our lives must be measured against these commissions. All of life therefore is subject to moral analysis, just like every minute of a workday should be used for work, not idle chatter and wasting time on the Internet. All of life should be measured against Genesis 1:28, which is what the Mosaic law and Jesus’ two greatest commandments will eventually do. All marriage should be measured against Genesis 2:24–25. All government should be measured against Genesis 9:5–6. And so forth. To “miss the mark,” a common definition given to sin, is not just to cross a boundary one shouldn’t cross; it is to fall short of imaging God’s glory (Rom 3:23).

The continual question that drives an institutional hermeneutic, again, is, Who has authority to do what? Perhaps an illustration will help. My wife and I recently enjoyed a dinner and jazz event at Washington, DC’s historic Howard Theater. Suppose the affair inspired us to open our own jazz club in the Maryl...

Table of contents

• Preface: The Importance of Polity
• Chapter 1: Who’s In Charge of What Around Here?
• Chapter 2: A Covenantal Job Assignment
• Chapter 3: The Keys to Office
• Chapter 4: How Jesus Gives a Job to the Whole Church
• Chapter 5: How the Holy Spirit Establishes Overseers
• Chapter 6: Working with Other Congregations
• Chapter 7: Getting to Work
• Appendix 1: Quick Answers to Critiques of Elder-Led Congregationalism
• Appendix 2: Sample Members’ Meeting Agenda