Is Your Church a Hierarchy?

Power is more verb than noun.  It is action, not object.  It is easier to describe how it is used than what it is.  It is like love.  Something defined more by its expression than by its form. 

Prior posts in this series:

Is Your Church an Object?

Is Your Church a Clone?

Is Your Church a Body?

Is Your Church a Scoreboard?

Is Your Church a Factory?

 

Mechanical order tries to deliver power through position.  In it, positions are permanent.  A person is set into a position on an organizational chart and given control, authority, jurisdiction, permission-granting rights, and influence.  He or she is trained in how to use these tools to achieve a mechanical plan.  Then, the position encourages them to concentrate on what it is that will best manufacture the mechanical plan.  So, each person jockeys for positional power in order to command the resources needed to accomplish his or her specific part of the plan.  They are so absorbed by their position that they lose sight of the whole.  They see their role as disconnected from any other – except for those which may help them achieve their goal.  Participants concentrate all of their efforts on the success of their particular position.  But, position shouldn’t be where power lies.  Positions encourage seeing people as more and less significant.  Power should be in the person, not the position. 

 

In organic order, power is revolving.  It understands that the value of each part makes the whole. (I Corinthians 12:17-20)  At any point in time you will find different individuals leading and operating with power as individuals take on different roles depending on what is being demanded by the life of the organism.  Within this framework, there is no dominant member.  This encourages you to know when the community is inviting you to steward the power and when it is asking you to cede the power. 

 

For example, in a mechanical order marriage, decisions are made solely on the basis of position (“I am the husband” or “I am the wife”).  In an organic order (healthy) marriage, there are certain roles that need to be fulfilled.  These roles are carried out based upon who has the competencies and can best fulfill that role at that moment in time.  The power goes to this individual. 

 

It’s the same with any other healthy form of organic order.  Leadership and power is taken by whoever is “asked” to by the life of the organism.  It will “tell” you what parts should steward the power as time goes on.  It will be whichever parts will best serve the whole entity.  Thus, power is shared in a revolving manner – now John, now Tim, now Brent, now Dedra, now me, back to John.  Once power is cemented into a position; that position, along with that human, becomes the Head.  But, the Church is a Body operating with a non-human, invisible Head that can only be heard and understood fully when it is free to use the parts of the body in a revolving manner. (Ephesians 1:22)  By creating positions, the Head is being told what part it’s going to use for whatever it’s trying to do at any particular time.

 

This does not mean that everyone has the same amount of power at the same time.  The life of the community is always inviting people to step forward and steward the power.  People figure out what they’re good at, and that shapes what their roles are.  There’s not just one leader.  Different people lead during different parts of the process and it is understood that the value of each part is what makes the whole.   We are to live in a way that maximizes individual and communal sources of power. (I Corinthians 12:12-26)

 

Within mechanical order, positions feel the need to influence every aspect of the organization’s life, decide on its every movement, judge every action, and make all the rules.  Within organic order, your “position” is YOU.  Isn’t this the type of environment you want to live in?  It’s time to be done with top-down approaches.  The day of organic order has come.

Myers, Joseph R. "Organic Community"

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Comments

[Phil Norcom]

In Rev. 2:15 a statement is made:

"So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans." -Jesus

Nico = "to supress"
Laitan = "the laity"

[Dan B]

leadership in a church ie. elders and deacons is not the same thing as the priesthood of believers. The understading that all believers are gifted differently does not negate the need for a leadership structure.God has established this both in the church and marriage. This all sounds like the shack who goes so far to say that there is no hierarchy in God. I dont know how a person reads the same Bible as I do and comes up with this.Authority or Headship is not sinful, it was established by God before the Fall and will be continued in the New Heavens and New Earth. Leadership can do aweful things with power, but that doesnt mean we get rid of it, we just seek to conform it to scripture. Is it any wonder to anybody that the God of the Shack is so popular. Our society dispises authority...so give them a God and a church that is stripped of it and they will love to have there ears tickled.

[2nd man united]

Dan has a good point here. C.S. Lewis said something to the effect that the devil sends error into the world in pairs of opposites and trusts that our disdain for the one will cause us to jump over to the other.

He doesn't care which one we fall for, just as long as we fall for one of them. It's agreed that our society is starting to reject the notion of authority and structure and that we should be careful not to follow suit because there IS authority and structure in the government of God.

But, the how and the why and the "by whom" is what we are discussing here. Not the "if." We can't reject the authority and structure of God and how he brings that about in His people and through His Body. We shouldn't talk about abandoning authority and structure, but about how the HEAD brings that about organically through the Church as a living organism.

The big disconnect that we're all trying to recover from though is the fact that most of the "authority" and "structure" that we've seen has been and is being built mechanically instead of organically. More specifically related to this post, positionally rather than relationally.

Also, we must be careful not to accuse those who are exploring the deconstruction of a mechanical mindset of rejecting authority and structure when they are not.

[Dan B]

the "by whom" is spelled out in quite some detail in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 and generally characterized by Jesus as those who are servants of all. Appointed leaders in a church does not eliminate the equality or significance of each and every body part. Just the same as the man being head over his wife does not make him "better" than her. An the ultimate example of this is Father and the Son...Jesus said the Father was "greater" than Him, while also saying that He and the Father "are one" (Jn 10:30; 14:28). Jesus had no problem with being subordinate to the Father in "office" while being equal in "essence". So again, I say that the concept of the body means that all contribute in different and needful ways, but the vast majority will not lead or rule in the sense of an elder. I think you are confusing God's structure of elder leadership and the reality of the body of Christ. My "accusations" were aimed at the Christianity that THe Shack introduces, and I will stand by my statement that the typical unbeliever or even believer who has had a bad experience with authority is hates the idea of a group of elders ruling over them. You can decontruct whatever you want, but you will have to tare some pages out of the Bible to get rid of this model. And again, lest I seem like a wife beating, KJV only, women better keep quite "fundamentalist"....I stress that leading essentially means serving, as our Master modeled for us.

[2nd man united]

Dan-

I enjoy your insights.

We're talking about the same model. The model is not in question. It's about how the model (living organism) is built, WHO (Jesus) does the building and how it functions.

I Timothy 3 and Titus 1 can be interpreted two ways:

1. As an instruction manual of how to structure a church mechanically. This would be through the lenses of the Law.

2. As a literary witness of how the Lord structured the early Church organically. This would be through the lenses of the Law of the Spirit of Life.

Dan, do you think the author is suggesting we tear out these two chapters and eliminate God's structure of elder leadership? Or, do you think he's saying that we need to see them through different lenses and rethink how elder leadership comes into being and is practiced in most "churches?"

Let's say a group of people gets together and starts a church, but there are no individuals that reflect the kind of person that is talked about in both of the chapters referenced. Do we just appoint elders because we need them? Or do we allow the Lord to grow elders?

[Dan B]

"In organic order, power is revolving. It understands that the value of each part makes the whole. (I Corinthians 12:17-20)"
I think that the author says nothing about eldership but about the gifting of the body. 1 Cor 12 is not about church leadership, and it seems to me that it is his understanding of it. Just the fact that he doesnt say the word shepherd, elder, or overseer is concerning when talking about leadership b/c those are biblical terms. I encourage and desire body life, however there will be disorder and many problems if there is no oversight by qualified men. To your latter question...I would be in favor of growing them. Why does he not talk about such things as eldership and address 1 Tim 3 if thats what he has in mind for a leadership model? Why does he instead use 1 cor 12?

[2nd man united]

Yeah, he doesn't say anything about eldership. I can't speak for the author, but it may be because that is not what the book is about. The book is about using nine organizational tools in an organic order way instead of a mechanical order way.

See prior posts, especially "Is Your Church an Object?"

I referenced the verses specifically because he's talking about body life. True eldership is not a position, as you have stated, it's a state of being.

So yeah, I think you're right. He's not talking about eldership here. He's talking about the function of the Body. Thank you for pointing out this disctinction as I think it's an important one.

[Dan B]

I agree totally about eldership about it not being a position...and thanks for trying to understand where I was coming from.