The Radical Resurgence

Decision Making.

One of the most basic elements in the fabric of church life is decision-making. Every church makes decisions (even not making a certain decision in itself still constitutes a “decision”). Churches decide such things as when to meet, who will be received into the church, how to use church funds, who will teach, and how they will be governed. Yet it is precisely in the area of decision-making that most churches are totally untrained and unprepared, The inability to resolve conflict is a central reason why churches are splitting at epidemic levels.

Two key reasons why churches split are (1) the lack of participation by the whole congregation in decision-making, and (2) the refusal of the leadership and/or congregation to confront problems, which then repeat themselves in the future (Wayne Kiser, “Church Splits,” Evangelical Newsletter, 9:6, March 19, 1982).

The most important thing a church must learn in its life as a body is how to work through things together. To put it in the language of 1 Cor.1:10, we must learn “how to agree.”

1 Cor.1:10 — “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”

The Corinthian believers had a serious problem: they were clustering around personalities, which then caused divisions. To solve this problem, Paul appeals to them “to agree” about the sinfulness of this situation. If they “agreed” the divisions could no longer exist.

The following excerpt comes from David Fitch’s blog. You can read the entire post at the link at the bottom.

Recently (in private e-mails) I have been getting some heat from some Neo-Reformed friends who feel I have either not been fair or too critical of Neo-Reformed theology on this blog. On other hand, some members of the committed Neo-Reformed have engaged me (again via private e-mail)  letting me know they appreciate my insights and dialogue. They have been encouraging. All this to say, I think dialogue between Neo-Reformed folks and Neo-Anabaptist Evangelical Missional people like me would be a very good thing. And I have been convicted of not doing enough to move us in this direction.

This is why I was so glad (even freaked out a bit) when my Canadian bro Darryl Dash (otherwise know as “Triple D” by another Canadian bro because he as a recent Doctor of Ministry degree) put this list of questions before me and asked me to respond for his blog. I sense a good impulse here. Dialogue together for the Kingdom. So at the risk of losing my reputation as a grumpy Neo-Anabaptist (evangelical), I answered these questions and I post them here. Darryl will be posting them on his blog as well here! I have hopes this will lead to further discussions of this kind. Way to go Darryl!!

1. There seems to have been a resurgence of the Neo-Reformed and Anabaptists at the same time. It’s almost like they’re parallel movements. What’s behind that?

If you ask me, this has to do with the cultural turning point facing the North American church. There’s a unhinging of sorts happening in N. American culture where the larger culture is becoming unhinged from the Christian moorings of its past. One can easily see this happening in Canada, Europe and the northern United States. And so now we, here in N. America, find ourselves in a “mission field.” We are forced to ask the question, how do we engage this newly secularized, even antagonistic-to-the-gospel culture? How can we be faithful to God’s Mission in Jesus Christ? In my opinion, the rise of Neo-Reformed and Neo-Anabaptists comes from responding to this cultural shift.  They can be interpreted as two parallel movements responding to this shift.

Today I come to my final essay in our series on Anabaptism. A question may legitimately be asked by those who have had the patience to complete the reading of the preceding sketches in this series: Why should a committed Baptist so vigorously promote Anabaptist ideals? The answer is that Anabaptist principles can be applied to many modern problems of church life –  restoring church discipline to our nominal memberships, fostering the ministry of the “laity,” furthering religious liberty, promoting global missions – to name but a few.

I must insist that I did not produce these essays because I am in favor of belittling the work of the Magisterial Reformers. For clarity’s sake I must repeat that I am thus indicting the Reformers only because they were inconsistent with their own principles of reformation. Here, of course, I am not alone in my thinking. As far back as 1914, Henry C. Vedder, in his book The Reformation in Germany (p. 345), had this to say about the Anabaptists:

They were the only party among those protesting against the errors of Rome who were logical and thoroughgoing. They alone accepted in absolute faith and followed to its necessary consequences the principle avowed by the leading reformers, that the Scriptures were the sole source of religious authority…. The Anabaptists alone had penetrated beneath the surface of traditional Christianity and comprehended the real Gospels of Jesus…. In a word, the Anabaptists were the real reformers, and the only real reformers, of the Sixteenth century.

In this essay I must turn aside from weightier matters of historical theology to deal with a rather simple-minded subject. If we were to read Matthew 23 and take Jesus’ words at face value, we should come away with the notion that He was not very impressed with all the titles we make so much of today. We should feel that all this talk about “Doctor” and “Reverend” and “Senior Pastor” is somewhat superficial, that titles are merely manmade epithets and quite contrary to the idea of a brotherhood church.

At the same time, if we were to read the New Testament epistles we would get a pretty clear hint of what Christian leadership looked like. It is a very far cry from the world’s model of a CEO or institutional president. And there is to be no pride, no bossiness, no “swagger” whatsoever. The New Testament is always insisting on mutuality and stressing the fact that we are all brothers (or sisters) in Christ, though, of course, some are “big brothers” in the sense that they have more wisdom and experience than others.

We must remind ourselves that in the passage where Jesus forbids the use of honorific titles He gives us a reason: “…for only One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers.” Jesus commands us to foreswear such titles, not because they are evil in and of themselves, but because they maximize what should be minimized in the family of God, where each member has equal value and worth.

The question that I want to sketch in this essay is one that concerns me greatly. One of the greatest threats to Christianity is Christendom. Christendom is an effort of the human race to abolish true Christianity. It does not attempt to do this overtly but under the pretext that it is genuine Christianity. I admit that here again popular beliefs of theologians and biblical scholars have perpetuated the false idea that Christendom is acceptable to God. In this whole arena of thought there is a grievous lack of any exegetical precision.

Now at the same time and in a corresponding manner, the sixteenth century Anabaptists, led not by Protestant or Reformed thought but by the Scriptures themselves, radically challenged the entrenchment of Christendom in European culture. A major difference between the Anabaptists and the Protestants was their view that the Scriptures provided models both for theology as well as for church organization. The Anabaptists were interested in restitutio, not reformatio. They considered themselves neither Protestant nor Catholic but a third way. The Bible, not tradition, provided the patterns for church organization just as plainly as it revealed the basic theological content of the faith.

In my previous essay, I mentioned the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Some readers may be thinking I am denying the need for leaders (elders/deacons) in a New Testament church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But before we can consider the role of congregational leadership we must begin with a fundamental reality – the fact that in the New Testament church there are no priests. And there are no priests precisely because Jesus Himself is the one and only mediator between God and men. It was not until the advent of Christendom that people were needed who could serve as mediators. Simple believers could no longer approach this God of sacerdotal Christianity. As in the Old Testament economy, holy persons were now required who would themselves be able to offer holy sacrifices in holy places (now called “sanctuaries”). In the New Testament, the people (laos) themselves were the bearers of the sacred. Jesus had radically abolished the clergy-laity distinction of Judaism.

It seems to me that we must root out from our minds any acceptance of such a sacral view of the church. When I say that Jesus is against sacralism, I am not trying to say that He is against ministries such as preaching and teaching and leading. It was He, in fact, who gifted the church with the equipping ministry of pastor-teacher (Eph. 4:11). The trouble is that there is very little in the New Testament that would support the thesis that the church is to have a special class of Christians who rule over the church in the place of the Head.

Churches today have to make a choice to follow contemporary patterns of ecclesiology or use the early church as a model, as did the Dissenters of the sixteenth century.

Although they shared many theological concepts with the Protestant Reformers, the Dissenters parted company on several crucial points including the separation of church and state (the church must reject all ties with princes and magistrate), believers’ baptism (the church consists solely of voluntary members), and restoration rather than reformation (the only valid model of church life is the early church as revealed in the New Testament).

Because of these beliefs the Dissenters endured fierce repression. What sustained them was the reality of Christian community. They truly loved and cared for each other. Like the earliest Christians, they wanted to be known above all by their love, Christian works, and mutual support. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, criticized the Swiss Brethren for teaching that “every Christian is under duty before God to use from motives of love all his possessions to supply the necessities of life to any of his brethren.”

At the very heart of the dissenting churches was the practice of Christian love and community expressed in material support and concern for outsiders. So genuine and important was the reality of community that the severest penalty was exclusion from the fellowship.

Sharing Christ with One Another . . . Not Listening to a Pulpit Monologue

Jon Zens

Although I have problems with some of William Barclay’s views, the following observations on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14, taken from his The Letters to the Corinthians [1], may be the best concise summary of the spirit of early church meetings that I have ever seen. I have added headings that are not in the original text, and will make several comments after Barclay’s excerpts.

Liberty, But Not Disorder

Paul comes near to the end of this section with some very practical advice. He is determined that anyone who possesses a gift should receive every chance to exercise that gift: but he is equally determined that the services of the Church should not thereby become a kind of competitive disorder. Only two or three are to exercise the gift of tongues, and then only if there is someone there to interpret. All have the gift of forth-telling truth. but again only two or three are to exercise it; and if someone in the congregation has the conviction that he has received a special message, the man who is speaking must give way to him and give him the opportunity to express it. The man who is speaking can perfectly well do so, and need not say that he is carried away by inspiration and cannot stop, because the preacher IS able to control his own spirit. There must be liberty but there must be no disorder. The God of peace must be worshipped in peace.

“To Each One Is Given The Manifestation Of The Spirit For The Common Good” (1 Cor.12:7)

Food For Thought from D. M. Lloyd-Jones

There is also this whole question of the exercise of gifts in the church. I mentioned our ex-Exclusive Brethren this morning and I did so deliberately in order that it might focus our attention on this particular point. Here are men who have come out of their bondage but are bewildered and confused; they do not know what to do. They have certain major difficulties, one of which is the so-called “one-man ministry.” We have our views about that, but I feel the time has come for us to examine even questions such as these. It does not mean that you necessarily abandon that ministry, but it does focus attention on this: are we giving members of the church an adequate opportunity to exercise their gifts? Are our churches corresponding to the life of the New Testament church? Or is there too much concentration in the hands of ministers and clergy?

You say, “We provide opportunity for the gifts of others in week-night activities.” But I still ask, “Do we manifest the freedom of the New Testament church?”