Introduction
This if the fifth post in a chain blog on a subject very dear to my heart, the restoration of Biblical unity within specific communities, most commonly known now as the City Church Movement.
Simply put, the New Testament only knew of one Church per city. Each was locally autonomous, but walking in unity. Not only was this Christ's clear desire (John 17), but the present state of denominationalism was decried by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 and 3. I and others have written elsewhere on an apologetic for this (I have yet to read a compelling rejoinder), so we will not revisit that here. Nor will I try to summarize the earlier articulate posts in this series.
What I will seek to do (as in any good conversation) is fit into the flow of the present discussion. To understand that, I would recommend reading the four prior posts (the links are at the end of this post).
It is my understanding that all four of the brethren posting to date are Southern Baptist. I cannot tell you how much it heartens me to see SBCers willing to lead in this movement, which I believe is stirring in the hearts of many aspiring New Testament followers of Jesus. I am privileged to be able to add some thoughts and hope that others will join as well.
What Will "City Church" Leadership Look Like?
Steve, I agree with you that pride is the main roadblock. Pride has two attendant problems, it seems to me. First, it seems pride is so easy to perceive in others and not see in ourselves. Second, pride rarely stands alone--it attaches to so many other things. We usually try to attach it to principle (like maintaining "Pentecostal Identity"), but it has a way of attaching to other stumbling blocks, such as fear.
When I have spoken to pastors here in State College, PA who are not part of the City Church movement here, one thing that has surfaced almost immediately is the issue of leadership.
One evangelical pastor seemed to get the exegetical argument for City Church, but said, "If there is only one Church, who will be the pastor?" As I recall, he didn't elaborate, but it seemed that he was saying, "One Church. One Pastor. It won't be me. We lose our freedom and autonomy. Count me out."
Yes, there are roadblocks to City Church, but someone has to move them. Yes, it's the Lord that does that, but He uses leaders (can we say from Revelation 2-3, "angels"?:)). That then begs the question as to what that humble, servant-hearted leadership might look like...
Well, it seems to me that the internal polity of the City Church is most relevant. If we don't get that solved, few are going to buy into the movement out of fear, pride, confusion...whatever you wish to call it.
First, let me reiterate that I believe each City Church is fully autonomous. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the talk I've heard most of my life about the "autonomous local church" has confused "church" with "congregation." So, imagine that a town of 5000 people had 2000 practicing Christians. They were divided into 200 house congregations of 10 people each. Each house congregation is fully autonomous and unconnected to the other 1990 believers in the city? What a preposterous idea, but that is the local extension of the current unbiblical system that we have.
So, am I advocating an episcopal polity for the City Church? Actually, no. I will argue against that here. The comment from the pastor above seemed to imply that an episcopal polity on the City Church level was the only option.
Let's look at the advantages/disadvantages of the three major polities: episcopal, presbyterian, and congregational. Let me preface by saying that I don't believe any of these options are heretical, although I personally lean toward the last two. All three have varying support in scripture, and God can use all three to accomplish His ends.
Episcopal Polity
Even though the Early Church became episcopal on the local level and then on the extralocal level (as bishops deferred to the Bishop of Rome), I don't believe such a polity is workable or even desirable, particularly at this point in the game. It seems to me that this is what Pete Wagner and others are advocating when they use the term, "Apostle of the City." First, although I believe in contemporary small "a" apostles, I believe it is a missional term, not a governmental term. Paul appointed elders in Ephesus, not a successor apostle. I don't know of one place in America where such an approach has taken hold and worked, even cities with very well-recognized leaders. Maybe we will see something like this someday, but I doubt that I will see it in my lifetime. Early Church bishops rose up out of the existing unity in each city (we will not explore the various heresies that arose in sundry places). Since we are in a restoration mode, I cannot see God anointing tens of thousands of "Apostles/Bishops of the City" across America.
Indeed, an episcopal polity presupposes sufficient doctrinal unity on secondary and tertiary matters to allow there to be sufficient trust in the single pastor/bishop of the city. Crassly put, I believe this is a pipe dream.
Yes, an episcopal polity might be efficient in the short-term (just as it is in megacongregations), but I believe it's weaknesses in the City Church Movement are more than obvious.
Congregational Polity
While I am still a strong defender of some degree of congregational polity for, um, congregations, I think congregational polity for a City Church is also unworkable. Monthly/bimonthly/semi-annual/annual meetings for every believer (congregational member?) to vote on issues of City Church concern, using Robert's Rules of Order? I don't think so. That would be more hell than heaven, it seems to me.
While I am about to argue for an "Elders of the City" model, I think a blend between congregational polity (for each constituent congregation) and a presbyterian polity (for city leadership) may be workable. Each congregation needs to have as much autonomy as the system can permit. The City Church should be about freedom to live out our doctrinal DNA (as long as it is not heretical), worship preferences, various practices of spiritual gifts, etc., etc. Any kind of heavy-handed City leadership will wound rather than empower.
Presbyterian Polity
I think the best City model is having recognized "Elders of the City." This would probably start (as we have in State College) with a collegial gathering of the lead pastors of constituent congregations (since we've taken a very intentional approach to this, our core group of congregations went down to 5 and is now back up to 8--out of 25 evangelical congregations in town), but it could later expand to recognized lay leaders, staff pastors, heads of parachurch ministries, etc. (That's where we are at in State College right now. A Baptist pastor in our group is strategically thinking on a requested proposal on how we can reconfigure to allow us to expand but not be unduly constrained by the present situation of total consensus decision-making, while maintaining the relationships we worked so hard to build over the past decade or more.)
As the total leadership group would expand, it would probably have to choose a smaller group to meet more often an do what executive committees usually do.
In short, this might look like Calvin's Geneva, except for two major things: no political power (that's going to be a challenge!), and freedom given to constituent congregations in all secondary and tertiary matters.
Yes, there are roadblocks to City Church, but someone has to move them? Yes, it's the Lord that does that, but He uses leaders (can we say from Revelation 2-3, "angels"?:)). That then begs the question as to what that humble, servant-hearted leadership might look like...
In order to keep this a conversation, I'll stop there.
Links and Chain Blog Guidelines
Chain blog rules:
1. If you would like to write the next blog post (link) in this chain, leave a comment stating that you would like to do so. If someone else has already requested to write the next link, then please wait for that blog post and leave a comment there requesting to write the following link.
2. Feel free to leave comments here and discuss items in this blog post without taking part in the actual “chain”. Your comments and discussion are very important in this chain blog.
3. When you write a link in this chain, please reply in the comments of the previous link to let everyone know that your link is ready. Also, please try to keep an updated list of links in the chain at the bottom of your post, and please include these rules at the bottom of your post.
Alan Knox, City Church - A Chain Blog
Charlie Wallace, City Church: Meeting
David Rogers, Roadblocks on the Path to City Church
Steve Sensenig, The Major Roadblock to a City Church
Update
So far, here are the posts since this post:
Jon Amos, A City Church Thought Experiment
29 comments:
Paul, thanks for your contribution to this. I hate to disappoint you, though, but I am not SBC. The other contributors have been, however.
Let that be noted as inaccuracy #1. Next?
BTW, yes, that is a disappointment, Steve.:)
Thanks for this post, Paul. This is entire chain blog is very encouraging to me. I've corresponded briefly with Alan and would like to post the next link in the chain. I'll leave another comment when my post is up, hopefully later tonight.
Paul,
These are some good practical thoughts.
In the Extremaduran Evangelical Council, in Spain, where we had a dynamic very similar to a "city church," each congregation sent two delegates to the leaders meetings. Each congregation determined who would be their delegates according to their own polity. Then the body of delegates elected officers, and an executive committee. New elections were held once or twice a year, depending on the particular position.
This may be either a bit more bureaucratic or democratic than how it was in NT times. But it seemed to work fairly well for us.
Sorry, stike the first "is" above.
My post, "A City Church Thought Experiment," is now up here:
http://aminor.us/2008/06/city-church-thought-experiment.html
Paul,
Thank you for adding your thoughts to the city church chain blog. I appreciate your thoughts on leadership, and your presbyterian polity model certainly has some postive features. It certainly seems that the church in Ephesus recognized a group of "elders" in Ephesus.
Your post raised two questions for me. 1) How do you see the presbyterian polity model differing from "ministerial associations" that are currently formed in many cities? 2) How does the identification with the church of a particular city affect believers who are not part of the leadership?
-Alan
Alan,
(1) I would say that "ministerial associations" are just that--professional associations like the AMA or the Bar. They have little to do with true biblical unity.
(2) Hopefully they get wind of it and ask their leadership why they aren't a part.:) People in the pews get this much quicker than us insecure pastors (for various reasons). BTW, on our Sunday bulletin, we list our congregational name, then right under it have "A Member of the State College City Church Movement." So, we put that declaration right out there for everyone to see.
"Simply put, the New Testament only knew of one Church per city. Each was locally autonomous, but walking in unity."
Paul, the Church in Corinth appeared subject to the Apostle Paul. How was the Church in Corinth an autonomous church?
And when I have the time, I'll come up with other Biblical examples that question the autonomy of City Churches. Or do we need a clearer definition of "autonomy" and a clearer theology of New Testament church government?
Jim, I'm all for clearer anything. Feel free to weigh in.
What is your motive behind unity? Do you believe Jesus will come back sooner with a unified Church? Do you believe more people will get saved with a unified Church? What is your rational for being passionate about church unity?
I have a question about unity, the other day I read a passage in Ephesians 4.
Ephesians 4:3 states to" "preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace".
Ephesians 4:3 tells us to preserve unity, not create unity. So why create unity when Ephesians 4:3 tells us to only preserve what we have?
Thanks, Anon, for the questions:
Motive and Passion come from...
1. My understand that Jesus is Lord of the Church (not me or tradition).
2. That Jesus prayed for visible unity of some kind (which the Early Church certainly had) in John 17 ("so the world will know...")
3. Apparently Jesus thought more people would get saved, but even if that is specifically not the meaning of His words, it doesn't matter. He wants it; He gets it; He's Lord. If Jesus is Lord, who am I not to give Him what He wants?
4. Taking Psalm 133 seriously.
5. Taking 1 Corinthians 1 and 3 seriously.
Now, to Ephesians 4:3 (I got this from David Rogers)--the text tells us to do something ("preserve"), else the verse means nothing at all. I'm open to other explanations of the word "preserve" but, for me, further division, strife, pride and lack of generosity don't seem to rise to top consideration of what the verse means.
I am not against unity. But it seems to me that it is hard enough to keep one's own congregation united. The Assembly of God has three divisions in it's own denomination. You have traditional pentecostals, which is where you fall into place pastor, and are very balanced. You have these prophetic folks who are all about Bob Jones prophecies and the "Elijah list", and you have Name-it-claim-it people who are raising in power.
I'm afraid if the AG does not try to unite their own denomination, either 1. The AG will become three denominations, which is happening.
2. The AG will be weak in its Biblical stance to conform to the beliefs of everyone for the sake of unity.
Why try to unite other denominations when the AG is divided enough already.
One more question? Define unity? What are the marks of a united church in both attitude and beleif? What are we united about specifically? Many confuse unity with conformity which is why unity talk scares people.
Anon, unity is not uniformity, else marriages would not work.
I believe unity is agreement on the foundational non-negotiables of the faith (which a century ago were called the "fundamentals," but that term got skewed over the last 100 years to mean it's opposite). It means loving each other, worshipping together from time to time, serving each other--all the basic stuff of being Christians in the same city.
I most certainly do not believe it is denominational mergers. Those are still extralocal entities, and are unbiblical.
I agree with you about the A/G, and I wouldn't be surprised to see all denominations face severe crises in the next 5 years. All of them--liberal, conservative and in between. We may truly see a new wineskin come (can't say 'emerge':)).
It seems to me that this "movement" is men trying to orchestrate only what happens naturally by the unity of the Spirit. Years ago, there was "city church", without it having a name or being an organized movement. When I was a girl, it was common for evangelical churches to meet together for revivals, campmeeting, prayer meetings, etc. Ministers were close with one another because they just all loved Jesus even though they had some very profound doctrinal differences. That took care of the pride factor too. No one was particularly in charge except the Holy Ghost and His leading.
I recently attended a baseball game where I met a Mom from the A/G, an independent Pentecostal Mom, and a Methodist Mom. The conversation quickly turned to Christ and when we left, we felt that we had been to church and we were thrilled to have found one another. We are all very close now.
Don't you think that if people were just in love with Christ that "city church" would happen naturally as a fruit of being of the "same spirit"? We didn't strategize, organize, plan, or evaluate, we were just three people in love with Jesus at a ball game and unity, love, and oneness just happened in spite of denominational differences. All this talking and writing and planning and scheming and analyzing seems to me to be carnal. I think that we are missing the main point and the main ingredient. People need to be enamored with Jesus Christ again and "city church" would just happen. No one would get credit except God. We wouldn't have to tell people we were part of the city church, it would be obvious. And what a witness to the sinners of the city it would be!
Amen, to the last comment!
Well, I'll weigh in and we'll see if I clarify anything. I'll start with my interpretation of New Testament (NT) church government, and I'll humbly try to make some application to where the church is today.
The NT church had four levels of government: 1) apostles, 2) elders/bishop, 3) deacons, 4) the congregation (Acts 6:1-6, 15:2).
The apostles included more than those who witnessed the ministry of Christ and Paul. For example, 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 2:6 suggests that Silas and Timothy along with Paul had apostolic authority in Thessalonica. And this was remote apostolic authority. And Titus 1:5 suggests that Titus carried out apostolic ministry in Crete. And there are other NT examples of a succession of apostolic ministry.
The NT terms for "elder" and "bishop" are exchangeable while elders/bishops are also shepherds. And Peter referred to himself as both an apostle and a fellow elder.
I see that apostles are elders/bishops who oversee other elders/bishops. And in many cases they start new ministries while they are marked by miracles.
I also see that the NT teaches little about senior elders/bishops or senior apostles. For example, Barnabas appeared to be Paul's leader in Jerusalem while Paul appeared to Barnabas's leader in the mission field. And in other cases, an apostle is not always a senior leader. And I see no elaborate teaching on senior leadership.
I believe that there was suppose to be a succession of apostolic leadership but it got miserably devastated somewhere along the line of church history. And I believe that apostolic leadership is supposed to be restored in the church. On the other hand, I have not yet been wowed by contemporary models of apostolic leadership to the point where I think that they are ready to lead the majority of the church.
I suppose that most contemporary pastors with a large staff are apostles. And many successful church planters are apostles.
I have little application for today apart from saying that apostolic pastors and apostolic itinerants need to humbly work out their differences and work together. And someday, Lord willing, I'll pull of this together in a more detailed article.
Anonymous,
Paul has already alluded to this. But I thought I'd throw my two cents in as well.
Eph. 4:3 says, in the NIV, "MAKE EVERY EFFORT to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." I think this is a good translation that captures well the force of what the verse is saying.
In the greek, the word translated "make every effort" is σπουδάζοντες.
According to Strong's, this comes from the root "spoude," which means "to use speed, i.e. To make effort, be prompt or earnest -- do (give) diligence, be diligent (forward), endeavour, labour, study."
Thus, unity is not just a passive thing, on our part. It requires diligence and effort. If I understand the Bible correctly, neither is it an option. It is a command of Christ that we do everything within our grasp to see to it that this unity is maintained.
In NT times, it appears that one important channel of this unity was the idea of the "city church."
Thus, if we are to be faithful to Christ, we should be interested in this, and do what we can to make it a reality, as well.
Anon 12:15 (and the Amen Corner:)):
I love your heart, and, as I said before, the people of God get this. It's the pastors who struggle with all the ins and outs.
I actually hope you are right and it just "happen(s) naturally," but let me share why I'm a bit skeptical that it might be that simple and 'romantic'. Let me use an illustration:
I've married dozens of couples over the years and known closely many others who I did not perform their ceremony.
There are couples that fall in love, elope and have great marriages. Then there are those who go through intensive premarital counseling and tests, where many of the ins and outs of marriage are discussed and the goal is to minimize post-nuptial surprises. Which do you think is better?
Now, let me take it to the next level to just begin to approach the complexity of Christian unity after centuries of denominational pride/division/etc...
Suppose two people who were married and divorced in their 20s, had children and lived alone for 40 year, meet and fall in love in their 60s. Each has considerable finances and both have children and grandchildren. Would you suggest that they should just elope and everything will happen naturally, or would you suggest premarital counseling, taking into consideration the views of their adult children?
That's where I'm at, but, again, having talked about this dream for over 10 years, I'd still love for it to "happen naturally."
If I'm being carnal, please forgive me. I'm still a romantic at heart.
This is anon 12:15
I see some of what you are saying. Certinly Christianity is not passive, in any sense or on any level. But I still believe that the cart is coming before the horse.
I get the idea that a lot of ministers see the lack of unity in the church both their pastorates and the local/national/world body, so they orchestrate things to bring people together in an effort to create unity, when unity is really a fruit of being of the same spirit. We experienced this in our own church. Everyone was talking about unity, fellowship, etc. So they decided that we needed to meet together for prayer and Bible study. So we did, for two years! And after two years we determined that we were not closer to one another than we had been before even though we met faithfully together, we planned outside activities together, we prayed together, we worked to produce unity by meeting each other's needs, but we could not honestly say that we felt any different about each other than we had two years previously, even though we knew we should feel differently about each other. It was frustrating!
So, we realized that we did not know one another "by the Spirit" as scripture exhorts us to do and we learned that proximity does not produce spiritual unity. Then, our Pastor took 2-3 months and preached on the love of God. After about the 5th week, things just changed from week 5 to week 6 without anything being planned, orchestrated, or strategized. It was a work of the Spirit. That is what I am talking about. The whole atmosphere or our church is different, our body is different and people outside our body are taking notice of what has occurred. And yes, we work HARD at preserving the bond of unity, but the bond has to begin with the exlusive work of the Holy Ghost in indiviual hearts, individual congregations, inviviual Pastors, and THEN, city church will be established. We realize that the devil would love to come and bring offense, have us look at how we are different instead of at the glue of the Holy Spirit, that the devil would love us to be offended at things that are not doctrinal in nature, but are a mater of personal preference, just to break up that unity. So I understand that we are to work. But before we can work together, there must be something to work at preserving, and THAT can only come as a result of a supernatural work of the Holy Ghost. It cannot be manufactured through the efforts of me--sincere as they may be.
Paul, I finally pulled together some of my ecclesiology, and its the seventh post in the chain. I'd like to see how you agree or disagree with The Restoration of the City or Locality Church and Apostolic Leadership.
Jim, I wrote a paper some years ago on contemporary apostles. While I do believe in such, I think the term is more a lateral, dynamic, missional term (apostles are the at the tip of the arrow)than a static, hierarchical governmental term.
I think the NT term of "elder" is more descriptive of church governmental leadership.
Paul, I've heard other people state similar positions about contemporary apostles while I've never seen a convincing biblical explanation to support it. I try to study all of the related Bible verses while looking at different interpretations of the verses. I would like to examine your approach to the topic. Have you posted your paper anywhere?
Jim, I haven't done that yet, but may once I find out how to do it technologically.:)
It starts with Paul appointing elders before leaving Ephesus (not a junior apostle) and stretches into the history of the early church where the term apostle went into disuse rather early. Having said that, I still believe in contemporary apostles. A great example hundreds of years after Christ was Patrick of Ireland.
Paul, I agree with you more about elders than I agree with you about apostles. I agree that the New Testament doesn't teach the need to establish resident apostles in city churches. And the New Testament does teach that elders are the primary resident leaders in city churches.
And I agree that the term "apostle" went into disuse rather early. But the concept of hierarchal apostles continues to this day. As I suggested in my post, the Early Church changed the lingo while it kept the concept. The Early Church, for reasons unknown to me, used the term "bishop" to refer to hierarchal apostolic successors. And there was a unanimous belief in apostolic succession until I guess John Calvin.
And I don't see that belief in contemporary hierarchal apostolic ministry is critical for contemporary city churches as long as the city churches are getting ministry from apostles regardless of the title. On the other hand, when we get to the point where you suggest that denominations will fall apart, then I believe that many more elders will believe in hierarchal apostolic ministry.
I've posted link #8 in this chain blog in a post called "Unity and the Church in a City".
-Alan
I've posted link #8 in this chain blog in a post called "Unity and the Church in a City".
-Alan
Paul, I've appreciated reconsidering what I believe about city church government. While I believe in apostolic government (regardless of the title), I've struggled in the past with people like Peter Wagner and others before him describe the term, "Apostle of the City". And now I see why I reject that the term is a biblical mandate. For example, the Early Church eventually developed a system of a primary apostolic bishop at the head of every city church. However, I agree with you that the New Testament (NT) doesn't teach about raising up city apostles and everybody who rejects apostolic succession believes that the post-biblical model of apostolic bishops eventually failed.
On the other hand, I still see the NT implying that apostles mentor new apostles while apostolic government is the first governmental tier in the church under the Lord. And I also see NT apostles ministering to multiple cities. As I try to pull all of this together, I conclude that apostolic government is intercity government while elder government is city government. And in today's church, many city elders are also apostles. And within this interpretation, I see God anointing tens of thousands of apostles across America.
I reject the term "Episcopal Polity" apart from historical purposes, because as I've mentioned elsewhere in this chain, the term "overseer/bishop/episcopal" is sometimes interchangeable with elder/presbyter" in the NT while the post-biblical Early Church distinction between them was a misnomer. On the hand, I see apostolic polity handling intercity government. And I see the apostles in Acts working with the consent of the elders and the congregation.
I argue for a combination of apostolic polity, presbyterian polity, and congregational polity. And I'd never want the argument to cause division.:)
City church - movement or myth.
I wonder if the concept of the "city church" is one we've engineered for our own purposes. Maybe the letters in the new testament were written to founding congregations that happened to be in the cities where they were started and writing to the "Corinthians" or the "Ephesians" is practical fact rather than a model of church order. The way things are going these days (Liberalism or extreme charismania in the visible churches for example). It may well be that the faithful "church" is the one that comes out of the visible church for the sake of conscience. That, likely, will come about as a result of what is perceieved as, or actual is, the adulteration of biblcal truth coming from advocates of various popular ecumenical movements like City or Purpose Driven Church. Perhaps "Pilgrim Church" will be the last days church - faitful to Jesus, concience and the Word regardless of location, be it city, house, or band.
Anon, thanks for jumping in.
(1) "for our own purposes"--I thought my heart was to obey God and His Word. Apparently you know my heart better than I. What might my motive be for engineering such a thing? Is it fair for me to speculate what your heart might be that would lead to sectarianism, or would that be unbiblical judging if I did it? How can you assert that you are driven by conscience and I am not? Are you so sure that you cannot be deceived?
(2) "founding congregations"--we know that in many cities the Church grew into multiple house congregations, yet saw itself as one Church. Am I in error on the history of the Early Church here, or did every city limit themselves to 50-70 believers?
(3) I believe sectarianism is a blatanatly clear adulteration of biblical truth (and possibly even open heresy). Can you show me where I am wrong?
(4) The term "fundamentalism" originally came from those theological conservatives that desired unity around a framework of a handful of non-negotiable fundamentals. Do you reject that movement of 100 years ago? How many non-negotiable 'fundamentals' do you have? Can you see how a list of 100 'fundamentals' destroys the meaning of the word?
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