66 - Church Governments

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity. We're glad to have you with us.

We are right now in our School of Systematic Theology. We've been going over, basically, this is lesson number 66 of the class of an

Introduction to Systematic Theology in our School of Systematic Theology. We're right now in what we're calling book number four, because we kind of broke this up into four syllabuses just so that each of them would be about equal length, roughly.

And this is called God's Program for the Ages, the Doctrines of the Church, and Last Things, in other words, eschatology.

So, we encourage you to get your copy of the syllabus. If you don't have one, you can pick one up at our store at store .strivingforeternity

.org. The syllabus is Systematic Theology book four. So, with that said, it's good to have a syllabus just to have the notes and follow along.

You can take your own notes since some things that I have that I say are not in the syllabus, and then there's things in the syllabus that I don't always say.

So, it's good to have the syllabus just for that reason. So, this lesson we're going to be going over today is lesson number three, and we're calling this the church's government.

Ooh, he said the nasty G word, government. Yeah, I know. We're not supposed to be like talking about government, right?

Isn't that what some people think? No, we're not using government in a bad sense. Some people hate the government.

I don't know. So, but here's the thing. We're talking about the way the church governs itself, and as we discuss the government of the church, we're going to address how they make decisions, what's the process in which decision making is, and who has the power in decision making.

That's really what is the issue. Who's the authority when it comes to decisions? And we're going to look at various views of the different churches and the way they organize themselves.

And this is where this is helpful. If you get asked the question of, you know, what's the difference between Presbyterians and Baptists and Lutherans and Brethren and, you know, all these different, all these denominations.

Well, the biggest area that you're going to see the differences in the major denominations is going to be in how they govern themselves.

And that's what we're going to do. So this is really the, you know, within Lutheranism, there's a bunch of branches, but Lutheranisms have like a set way they govern the church and a set way that they have some basic beliefs they all agree on.

Same with Presbyterians and Baptists. But where the difference is, is going to be in how they govern themselves.

And let me say right up front, I know I'll get to this in the end as well, but I do not think that Scripture is really clear on specifically how a church governs itself.

And so with that, we're going to go through this lesson probably in one week and we're not going to look at a single passage of Scripture because there isn't much.

I mean, what I find is a lot of people look at different passages of Scripture and they read a meaning into the text to say, oh, see, this form of government is biblical.

So with that said, I don't think too much of it's biblical. I think a lot of it's more practical. There's some pros and cons or advantages and disadvantages to each of these.

We're going to look at them and we're going to see which ones, I will tell you at the end, which one that I kind of lean toward.

And I actually kind of lean toward two different ones. So just saying. But the point being is, this is not an issue that we should be dividing over.

I know denominations have divided over it, but I'm saying as brothers and sisters in Christ, this is not an issue of division on how someone runs a church.

I've seen some churches that do. Some people make an issue that their way is the only way to run a church.

You're not going to hear that here, just saying. So let's start with the views of government.

There are basically five, and that's your blank there if you have your syllabus. There's basically five views of how the church is governed.

Note that the titles given to them are merely attempts to describe the particular form of government.

Okay? It's just something, there's nothing, some of these are used by others as well, some are not.

So it's just, this is just an attempt to try to give a description to the five different forms.

The orders given are more or less representative, represents a progression towards the biblical church government.

And so the idea being, just a hint, that there is a, we're going to try to go through,

I think, somewhat historically, chronologically, how some of these governments had formed over time and where it got to where I'm going to lean towards.

So I'm just, that's kind of a hint, I'm at the end. But again,

I'm not saying, notice, I'm saying where I lean, but it's not something

I can be dogmatic on. Some of them I'm going to be a little bit more dogmatic than others, and I'll give you reasons why I think some are weaker than others, but I'm not saying they're unbiblical.

By the way, there's a difference between non -biblical and unbiblical, so let me be really clear. I think the government of the church, outside of, as we looked at last lesson with pastors and deacons, the offices of the church, outside of that, what you're going to find is that most of it's non -biblical.

That doesn't mean unbiblical. So non -biblical means it's not in the Bible. The Bible doesn't speak to it.

Unbiblical means it's contrary to the Bible. The Bible speaks to it, and it's opposed to it, okay?

Church government, I think non -biblical. Homosexuality, unbiblical. Clear?

Okay. So, let's look at the first one. It is called the national view of government, the national view of government, and with each one of these

I'm going to try to give a diagram, and hopefully the diagrams will help, but this is the churches organized underneath the authority of the state, okay?

You're going to see this, and with these I'll give each of them, so I'll give the explanation, the diagram, some examples, and some pros and cons, alright?

So in this one, you have the diagram is really, as you see there, kind of the big arrow, the big box, a little bit bigger box, is the state, represents the state, smaller box representing the church, and the authority is kind of passed both ways, but it's the idea that it's a state church.

You see this in like the Anglican Church of England, not the Anglican Church here in America, but the state church is the

Anglican Church, maybe not having as much of an influence anymore as it used to, but the idea is that there was no separation between church and state, okay?

That's one of the things that makes America kind of unique, is that we saw this separation of the government for the people, and the church, and what you saw in the

Middle Ages was that the church would have a great influence on the politics and the governing, and so the emperors and popes were, you know, either in cahoots, or working against each other, and it would be a real problem.

You go to like the Puritan era, and what you see is that you see Queen Mary, you had the

Anglicans split off from the Roman Catholics, then you have Mary who returns to the Catholics and kills off all those pagans that are non -Catholics, then you have another king or queen, they'll come in and say, no, we've got to kill all the

Catholics, and it was just based on whatever the king or queen was, whether they were Catholic or Protestant, meant that everyone had to die, right?

So we would argue that a problem here is that the church should be the last court of appeals for spirituality, not the state, and so we don't use the power of the state to resolve things within the church, spiritual issues.

The state, and this is a foreign concept to some of us in America because we don't have a notion of a state -run church, and so with that, it becomes a difficulty sometimes for us to understand, how is it that the state and church would be one?

And so some of these things may be, this one may be difficult for Americans to understand because we never had a state church, and so the church was always the last court of appeals for those within Christianity, within spiritual things.

There's no example of this in the New Testament, by the way. You don't see Rome, this church being part of Rome until Constantine, an emperor who decided he was

Christian, and everyone he declares as Christian. That's really where you see the very first time of this church -state or this national government.

Now, you see it in Israel, which is somewhat where many of those that would base this are going to base it off of because Israel, God was dealing with a nation, so He gave laws to a nation, and so that Israel was supposed to be a theocracy where God was the governor.

God was the governing force, and therefore, yes, it wasn't that Israel was under the state in that case, it was actually that the state was under Israel.

And throughout history with this form of government in the Middle Ages, you saw this battle that went on at different places where you saw governors or emperors that would be excommunicated by popes, and now they're excommunicated, and because they're excommunicated, they don't have the right to be emperor, and you'd see this battle that would go on, and then emperors would just declare that popes violated the law and need to be imprisoned, all kinds of political battles.

So, you don't see any examples in the New Testament, and I'm making the exclusion of Israel because I do see a separation of Israel and the church, but there is permission for civil disobedience in a case where the government contradicts the

Word of God. Now, if the church is under or part of the government, there would be no way for disobeying the government if we're going to argue that it's biblical.

Now, what are the advantages of this? I should have started with some of the advantages. The advantage is really that, well, you've got the protection of the government behind the church, so you don't have to worry about separation of church -state issues, whether about, you know, this is a battle in England right now because all these laws, the church is to be protected, the church has got some rights, and people don't want to hold to those.

But I think that in this case, this is probably the least biblical that I think.

The next would be the hierarchical government view. The hierarchical government view.

And with this one, the explanation would be that it's a ruling body of clergy organized into ranks.

So, examples of this are going to be Roman Catholic, United Methodist. So this, what you have as a diagram is you'll have a head, someone that's, in a

Catholic church, it's going to be the Pope. The Pope is the head of the church. And then you'll have, you know, cardinals and bishops.

And so you see that the idea being is that there's a hierarchy. There's someone who's on top, and people that report, several people that report to that one on top, and then there's several people that report to the next level, and the next level, and the next level, okay?

And the problems I see with this are going to be, you're going to have, well, the advantages, and I should start there.

Some advantages are that it does, again, it does offer some protection. It offers the idea that there is someone above you to report to.

There's accountability. And this is one of the advantages, I think, of denominations, in a sense, where there is some accountability to a pastor who, you know, the congregation can go above his head, kind of.

And so I think there is that advantage. I think where the disadvantage becomes is that some view, like in Roman Catholicism, they view it as a succession of the apostles, and so they claim like a right that I don't think is there in Scripture.

Some base their view on incorrect definitions of the word pastor or the title for pastor, the office of pastor.

We looked at this last week that some see that there's, it talks about a bishop, an elder, and a pastor or minister.

And so some people see three separate offices. And so you have your pastor over a local flock.

You have, you know, your bishop that's over the pastor, things like that. Then they add some cardinals and things like that.

But where I think the difficulty, really where the problem is with this is you start to see that you have those that are leading and making the decisions are not tied to a local body of believers, but above them and far removed from them.

You also see in this one where I think one of the problems becomes that you see that the congregation doesn't have say in the decision making at all.

It's really from the top and it's top down. So I think that with that there is a little bit that we do have to recognize that there can be some politicking that goes on in the hierarchies to get to higher and higher offices.

And that shouldn't be the case. Now I'm not saying it's always the case, but there is more that's available, more that happens with that.

All right, so let's move to the next one if we can. This is the minimal government view.

This is the minimal government view. And this is the least amount of organization is best.

You ready for this diagram? Check out this diagram. I should be explaining diagrams more, but here, ready for a diagram?

Put it up. How's that for a diagram? Just one box.

That's it. That one's pretty minimal, right? It's the idea that you'll see this in the Quakers, the

Plymouth Brethren. It's the idea that there shouldn't be any hierarchy. None at all. There shouldn't be anything.

Now in some of them, like the Brethren Churches, you will have pastors, or they'll call them elders, and they hold that title, and those are the men who are going to preach.

And they actually take turns. A lot of times they take turns preaching week after week. They rotate around. But it's the idea that there is no decision making.

There's no one person or one group. It's the whole congregation that'll decide. There's no real power in an office.

So the advantage is that here you definitely don't have the politicking, right, by definition, because there's no hierarchy to politic in.

So you do get that advantage. We then see, some of the problems

I see is all the churches have organization. They say, even those churches that say they don't, there's still someone who's going to put up for vote, decide what's going to be voted on.

There's always going to be some organization. Even if you say, no, we have none, human nature, you're going to have some because someone has to call the meeting to order.

There's going to be a natural leader that's going to rise and organize things. So I don't think it's fully lived out.

All churches need accountability, even in like, especially in financing, things like that.

I mean, you need to have someone who decides how you're going to spend the money. There's going to be someone that has the right to purchase things, to do things.

So again, I don't think it's lived out. The Bible teaches officers and members.

And so in a lot of these churches, they'll say that they don't have any officers. They just identify the different men who are going to preach every week.

But the Bible does, as we looked at last class, it talks about the fact that there are and should be offices.

And the church is responsible for discipling and disciplining. And so you need to know who's doing what.

I mean, how do you discipline someone out of a church because they're in sin if there's no organization?

There becomes a difficulty in who calls that, who's going to take care of that.

So I would say that this, again, though I applaud the desire that they have in this form of government,

I just, I don't think it practically works out so well. Let's look at the next one.

This is called the federal government view. Now, this one is explained as individuals of the church surrender authority to a central leadership while still maintaining the right to vote for leadership.

So in this model, you have a smaller head on top, and that's representing the leaders and a bigger box at the bottom representing the church.

And they're the ones that are going to be doing the deciding. They're going to make the decisions. And so with that, what you have in those cases is, and this is going to be your

Presbyterian churches, your Bible churches, your Baptist churches. And this works out a lot of different ways.

Now, I'm going to say this is one of the two ways that I lean. So, and I'll explain why.

I think this is the most biblical, or not the most biblical, let me correct that, one of the most biblical. I said

I lean two ways, right? I think this is one where you don't have, now this, you don't have to have a denomination though you could.

But within the church, you have some denominations though that within the local body of believers, they have a local body, and within that local body, they will meet, they organize, and the church is the one who votes.

Now, some of that voting is that they vote on the leaders. And so what that says is, and this is where there's a lot of freedom in here, right, on how these things work out.

Some Presbyterian churches that I know, the church votes on the leaders, and the leaders vote on everything else.

So with there, what you have is that the church has got the authority to choose the leaders that are going to be above them, and then after that, they submit to that authority.

And others, the congregation is going to have more of a vote. Some, they vote for leaders and the budget.

Some, they're going to vote on everything. I mean, you know, some churches have almost every decision by vote of the congregation.

And so there's going to be, but that's actually going to be more of the second view.

So let me delineate those two so we understand. There's going to be a level of how much the congregation is going to be the ones making all the decisions.

And that's going to differentiate whether you're in the federal government view or the next one that we're going to call the congregational view.

We'll get to it in a minute. But in this one, what you see is that there can be a problem in that there's too much authority in a few people.

And the reason that can become a problem is you can have one pastor. You'll see this in some of the Baptist or Bible churches that are elder -led, they'll be called.

It's where the pastors make all the decisions. In some of those, what you have is the congregation votes on the pastor.

Some, sometimes they vote, sometimes what it is the pastors vote for the pastors. Okay, and so it's the congregation is submitting to the few that are in leadership.

But if you have one guy in leadership, one guy that's the pastor, he's making all the decisions.

I know of a church where that's the case. A pastor would come in. He basically rewrote the

Constitution in such a way that the congregation has no voting whatsoever anymore.

After they voted for this Constitution, that was the last vote they got to vote. And they voted in the

Constitution that gave this one man complete authority for everything in the church, all the spending of money, all the decisions, everything.

And they submit to that. Now, do you see a potential problem with that? Sure. The potential problem is if the guy's ungodly, if the guy's not living biblically, it can cause problems.

I've seen where you have guys that want to have an elder -led church because they don't want someone else making decisions for them, right?

I mean, that could be a problem if they are agenda -driven. Now, we spoke in the last class about the qualifications of a pastor.

And so, if that guy's not qualified, he might be prone to this sort of thing.

That's the importance. That's why so much of the qualifications were focused on the character, the character.

And so, with that, and by the way, if you do want, I don't know if we have a slide.

I didn't put one. No, we don't. Okay. Don't have a slide yet. I'll try to get one for next class. But we do have that on the website.

If you go to the store .strivingforattorney .org, if you do want to get those qualifications of officers, that's now a reference card that you can purchase from us.

So, that's something you can get. All right. So, the other problem I see with this one is it potentially stifles the priesthood of believers.

In other words, we are all, as believers in Christ, we're all priests in a sense. We all have a say.

Now, there is a point where I think that you can have, well, let's get to the next one.

I'll explain the problems with the next one. All right. The next is the congregational view of government.

The congregational view of government is explained as the church is pastor -led with members having a vote on many of the details of the church.

So, they have more than just voting in the pastor and the budget, but they have more say in how money is spent, in decisions the church is going to do.

So, this diagram is kind of the flip of the last one where you have a big box on top. That's going to be the congregation, and the smaller box is now going to be the pastor.

So, the larger number of people are going to have the authority. You're going to see this in many of the Baptist churches.

Now, there's a potential problem here where you had a problem that you could have when you have the authority in the previous, like the federal government view.

You can have an authoritarian pastor. Okay. Now, some of that pastoral authoritarianism can happen here as well.

If you have a guy who you put in a position that he's got, if the church isn't voting enough, you have the potential of the church pastor having too much say.

Now, the other potential is you have immature or inactive Christians giving direction to the church via a vote.

I mean, you could have members that aren't very mature. They don't understand spiritual things, and they get a lot of say in the direction of the church and what's going to happen with the church.

Okay. So, now let me take these last two because these two I said are where I kind of lean. It's the idea that the church is going to be functioning where you have pastors and deacons serving as leaders, and in some way, you're going to have the congregation having some say.

Where I see that is more practical one and less a biblical one.

Okay, and the reason I'm saying this, I think if you have one man or two men, three men that are pastors and a church that's, well, actually, it doesn't matter the size.

You have very few men that are pastoring. It's probably not wise to have the pastor making all the decisions.

Even if you're saying, well, the congregation votes the pastors in, but then the pastor makes every decision after that.

I think there's still potential problems, and those problems are that you end up in a case where you could have a guy who is an authoritarian, okay, and you have that in either one, but there's more checks and balances when the congregation is making more decisions if you have fewer pastors.

Does that make sense to you? Now, the flip side, though, is if you have 13, 14, 20 pastors, and you have a church of 1 ,000, 2 ,000, 3 ,000 people, well,

I mean, voting is going to be hard. I mean, bringing all those issues up before the people on a regular basis, even if you do it quarterly, it's a lot, and then having to vote on them, counting up all the votes.

I mean, it's a lot, right? Now, if you have that many men in leadership, you have some diversity.

The problem is when you get a guy who's a pastor who might be a very charismatic guy, and you have few people, other pastors, you could have a bunch of yes men, guys that are just going to go along with the pastor.

If you get one paid pastor who went to seminary, he's got the education, and you got guys that are serving as lay pastors that are not paid, they haven't been to seminary, they can sometimes feel intimidated, and if they're in doubt, they just side with the pastor.

So, if you have a pastor who's charismatic or a bunch of yes men that are pastors, you could have the potential of too much authority in too few people.

So, kind of my rule of thumb, it's not real hard and fast, but I kind of say that if you have fewer than a dozen pastors, you should probably be congregational rule, even if you are, if I was in a church where it's elder rule, and I was the sole pastor,

I would probably be calling for regular men's meetings. In fact, I was in a church where we had one pastor, and he used to have monthly men's meetings where any man in the church was welcome to come to the meeting, and it was a time where he would elicit input from all the men on things he was thinking, and what was happening in the church, and just trying to get a feel for where the people of the church wanted things to go.

And so, he would do that even though it would ultimately be his decision. They didn't have the vote, but what they did was they had the input, and he would then decide.

Now, if I was a single pastor of a church that was pastor -led in the federal view,

I would probably do something like that. I would call regular men's meetings to be able to discuss issues and get the input from other men and not think that I have all the answers.

Okay, seminary training doesn't provide you with all the answers. Actually, a good seminary training provides you with questions.

A good seminary gets a student who comes in thinking he knows everything walking out going, duh,

I got a lot of questions that I don't have answers to. That's what I think a good seminary does. Gives a lot of answers, but helps you realize you don't know as much as you think you know, all right?

So, now if you, so you're saying that I'm just, I think that it's a more practical issue.

I don't think it's hard and fast one way or the other. I think they each have pros and cons.

I definitely don't think that we should be under church, or sorry, under the state. I don't think there should be a tying of the church and state.

I don't lean toward that one, okay? I don't lean toward all the hierarchy because I just think that it allows for too much politicking.

That's the reason I'm not part of a denomination, though, like I said, denominations provide protection, especially as you have more and more lawsuits against churches and people that are doing things trying to close down churches, you have more protection with a denomination.

That's just the reality. And so, within denominations, there is the hierarchy. So, I understand why some go that route.

The minimal view, I'm not a big fan of only because I think every church is ultimately going to have some organization and you're trying to say, no, we're not going to have anyone.

You're trying to make it as minimal as possible, but there's going to be some. So, just figure out what that sum is and find, basically, really one of the next two views that you're going to be in, the federal view or the congregational view.

Who is the decision makers in the church? Is it going to be your pastors or is it going to be your congregation?

Now, I've been in some congregational churches where they give up the spiritual decision making to the pastors, but any of the business type things, they choose.

So, what type of curriculum they're going to buy, if they buy curriculum for Sunday school or children's church or VBS, the congregation would vote on that.

That would be something that they would choose. But the pastors would decide what books they're going to preach.

If someone needs to be church disciplined, if someone needs spiritual counseling, that would be something the pastors would do.

So, there's a lot of flexibility in these different ways, especially the last two, and there's some that kind of mix and match out of the last two.

I actually have it in the constitution that I had written for my church that there actually was some flexibility in there that it would be congregational led until such time that there were 12 or more pastors, in which case then it could, by a vote of the congregation, move to pastor led.

And I'm fine with that. I have no issue with that. So, you see, there's problems in each of them.

There's benefits in each of them. And it's going to be the congregation, the local congregation, that has to decide how they want to function.

I don't think there's any that's one versus the other. But did I say,

I don't know if I said, but this last one, the congregational government, you're going to see in a lot of your Baptist churches, your

Pentecostal churches are going to be more that way. So let's go on to the last thing, because this is the issue.

The vitals, the vital issues, the vitalities, what makes the church government essential.

So with this, it's what are these things that we must have in any church government?

OK, whatever view one takes, there are some essentials for organization to function as a unified body.

And if you look in your syllabus there, we have it, this is an acronym, as TEACH. I got this from my pastor.

He had explained this to me, my first pastor, and so I've used it since. It's the TEACH concept,

OK? Just makes it easier to remember by having it as an acronym. OK, the acronym is

TEACH. I should have, I don't have a slide, did I? I don't think I did. OK, I did not put a slide for this, so sorry. The first is team concept.

You have to have a team concept. You have to have team players. You can't have a lone wolf.

This is the, where I said there's the potential problems in some of these models is when you have a guy that thinks he's above the church.

I knew one pastor, a local pastor to me, he would always say the phrase to me, he'd always be like, well

Andrew, that's why they're sheep. And what he meant by that, and the first time

I asked him to explain it, what he meant by it is they're dumb and they need a shepherd. They're too dumb to make decisions on their own.

They need me to decide for them. That's basically what he meant by that, is that they're dumb.

You know when he stopped saying that phrase to me is the day that I said to him, you know something, you're a sheep too.

You know, that's the problem. Some pastors think I'm the shepherd. I'm not the sheep.

No, as a shepherd, you're still a sheep. That's the difference. You're still one of the flock.

You're not above the flock, pastor. You're one of the flock. And when a guy starts thinking he's above the congregation, it leads into potential problems, as it happened with this pastor, where he had a church split because he didn't like another pastor on the pastoral board that was asking him too many questions.

He didn't like it. The guy wouldn't just say yes to everything he decides. What'd he do? He just removed the guy from the board.

No reason given. Congregation didn't like that and he ended up causing a split. Why? He didn't have a team concept.

He wasn't a team player. It was his way or the highway. And if you're, it doesn't matter which type of government you have, you must be a team player.

That's the T. E is for effort. So team concept, effort. Look, being in leadership takes effort.

It is not something you're going to get into leadership or the decision making process and say, we're just going to, we'll just choose really quick.

No thinking involved. No, you need to put effort into it. You need to think through this, the decisions that are made.

It is vital that you're put a lot of effort in because these are have big implications to the, especially the newer believers, but all the believers of that congregation.

The A in teach is accountability. So team concept, effort, accountability.

Accountability is essential in a church leadership when, in who's making the decisions.

The pastors must be accountable to the congregation. The congregation must be accountable to the pastors. Pastors must be accountable to one another.

Congregation must be accountable to one. There must be accountability all around, but even more so when it's the decision makers.

One of the things I had, I had a church where I was at, we had called a new pastor. One of the things that changed immediately in the pastoral meetings that we had was before this guy came in, we had always had as a first part of all the pastoral meetings, we would sit and basically go around as a team and discuss very openly our struggles that week or that month or however it had been since the last meeting.

We would openly discuss areas of struggle, areas of weakness, and ask one another for, to keep each other accountable.

We regularly have times of accountability. And then after that, we'd have times where we'd each pray for one another for strengthening in the areas of their own weakness.

And so that, that helped, that accountability helped in, there wasn't a feeling that we, we're all vulnerable to one another.

Every one of us knew what each other struggled with. And that made a huge change in the way we treated one another, the way we dealt with one another.

But when we had this new pastor, he did not like that at all. I mean, when I, when

I started the meeting and I started to say, let's go around, that happened once and he did not want to talk at all about any of his weaknesses.

And the next week he ended that. He said, we're too busy. We don't have time for this. And that continued for about six, about, yeah, like three to six more months before I finally said, look, guys, if there is, because I felt that we were not, we no longer had a view of God's holiness in those pastoral meetings because we lost that accountability.

And I said, if we don't have a return to the holiness of God in these meetings, I'm out of here. And so I ended up having to leave.

Why? Because the accountability wasn't there. Mind you, that pastor got voted out by the congregation six years later because he was an authoritarian.

He had weaknesses that he didn't want to deal with. And anyone that brought those weaknesses to him, he ran them out of the church.

So he didn't have a team concept. He didn't want to put into effort into working with one another. He definitely didn't have accountability.

The C is communication. Team effort or team concept, effort, accountability, communication.

T -E -A -C. Communication is very important. Whoever is the decision makers, if you're going to be making a decision and the congregation is going to vote, if the pastors are bringing something to the congregation, they have to communicate it clearly and completely.

So those are the three C's. Communication, clearly and completely.

I would always refer to those as my three C's when it comes to this. Because if you're not communicating clearly and completely, some people, they don't want to be complete there because I want to sway the vote my way.

Well, then you got an issue if that's what you're doing and that's not good.

You need to convey the full amount of information and you need to do it clearly so everyone understands.

Now, there needs to be communication among the pastors. If the pastors are making decisions and it's a pastor -led church, they need to communicate to the congregation the decisions they're making.

There needs to be clear communication between the decision makers and those who are going to be living with those decisions, basically.

And then even within the decision makers, there needs to be clear and concise and accurate communication amongst them.

That's essential because if you don't have clear communication, any of these forms of church government are going to break down.

Okay? They're going to have problems. You're going to have people trying to hide things from one another, things like that.

Now, the last one, this is a toughie. We have our acronym is TEACH. Team concept, effort, accountability, communication, humility is

H. Humility. You have to have people who are humble.

And this is where I can see some of the problems in the congregational -led church. You have young, immature believers that don't always act humbly.

The reason you have pastors is by the point if you're biblically, if you're appointing them biblically, then they're being appointed based on the fact that they're already shown that they're humble.

You already see that in their character. So, you're going to put them in because they have that.

And so, they already have that been proven out in their life.

And so, you need that amongst a pastor. You need to have guys that are willing to submit to one another, willing to be humble and not prideful, not trying to get their own way, not agenda -driven, as we mentioned last week on the characteristics, the qualities, qualifications of a pastor.

So, you should have humility. You know, I know some pastors who have pastor -led churches and they don't want to go and tell the congregation decisions that they're making.

I think that's a problem. They don't want to communicate it clearly. They almost want to hide things. Sometimes, I've seen where some churches, they make decisions and they want to craft the wording of it so that...

I knew one church that basically violated the law, violated their own constitution because the pastors basically made a decision, or really made it so that the deacons made the decision.

They had a major purchase that they had to do. And the constitution says you can't make major purchases. And they had a major purchase of a new air conditioning unit in the midst of the summer months.

The air conditioning went out. And so, they decided they would... The pastors and deacons met and decided.

The deacons just sent out a letter saying, we did this. It wasn't even like we want to do it. They just went off and did it and sent a letter saying, we understand that the congregation is supposed to vote on this, but we didn't want any of you suffering without air conditioning for even a week.

So, we paid extra to have it put in right away. Now, the issue there is they felt that even though the congregation had the right to vote, they didn't submit themselves to the congregation.

They decided that they were above the congregation. So, really what it is, is it revealed that there you had a pastor that didn't agree with the church's form of government.

And he really wanted it to be an elder -led church. But the congregation wouldn't vote that in.

He made several attempts to get it voted in, and they didn't work out. And so, what they did is they acted like they were pastor -led.

And then they'd give it nice wording to explain it. Well, that's not a man who's willing to submit then to the congregation.

Maybe he's afraid of how they would vote. The reality is, is you have to, you know, there has to be humility.

Now, there could be an abuse of it. I've seen where, I saw one church where there was a deacon -led church, a

Baptist church, or it was really a Bible church, but Baptistic in the sense, where you had a pastor, and maybe you'd have paid associate pastors, and then you had deacons.

Deacons acted, really acted like pastors. And so, the thing that happened is, that you end up seeing is that what they did is they would, if they didn't like what the pastor was preaching is what ended up happening, they actually just decided, the deacons, they just cut the pastor's pay overnight.

Four guys got together, just voted, boop. And the pastor came in Sunday morning, and they approached him and said, oh, by the way, this is like literally like 15 minutes before he got up to preach.

They said, oh, by the way, we just want to let you know that we voted, we cut your salary in half, because we don't like the way you've been preaching.

I mean, you know, there's not a humility there, right? I mean, you see the breakdown in that.

Team concept, not there. The effort, the accountability, communication, humility, all of these are necessary.

I know of a church where, a church that I had a friend of mine was pastoring, and the church actually voted without him ever knowing there was a meeting.

They voted to see, because he was preaching something that a bunch of people didn't like, so they called a meeting without his knowledge and voted on whether they were going to kick the pastor out.

And it was interesting, because the pastor ended up resigning, he was counseling together on this subject.

And basically what happens, he's like, you know, they came thinking they're approving me. The church voted like 85 % to keep you.

You know, it was really 75 % at first, but there were a couple people that were swayed to be 85%. And he's like, what do you mean?

Well, we had a vote last night. He didn't even know there was a vote. He was like, you can have a vote without even communicating it to me, without talking to me, without expressing the issues?

And if they would have voted him out, they would have voted him out without him ever having an ability to voice an appeal.

He just would have been out. He felt that that was so, that that broke down these vitals of church government.

There was lack of a team concept between the congregation and the pastor. They put no effort into trying to work with the issues.

Basically, the issue is that some of the women thought that women should have a right to be pastors. And he was preaching out of First Timothy and preaching that they don't.

And they didn't like it. Now, there's no reason they should have not liked it. This church was a church plant that was founded because it was a split from another.

It was actually, this pastor left a church that decided that unless he allowed women to be pastors, they were going to kick him out.

And they kicked him out. So they knew his position ahead of time. But they started this church. They asked him if he would help pastor the church they were starting.

And they knew his position. And then they vote on whether they're going to have him in or not. It's like crazy. And so he ended up realizing that there was no, there wasn't good accountability and communication.

And so he had to step down, you know. And so I don't care which form of church government you have.

You must have these five elements, a team concept, effort put in, accountability, clear and complete communication, and then humility.

You must have those in any form. All right. And so if you have questions about this or anything else, next lesson we're going to talk about the ordinances of the church.

I think there's two, baptism, Lord's Supper. We're going to talk about what they mean. We're going to talk about why only those two.

Are there others that some have that they think are an ordinance? Why and why not? All those sort of things. That's what we're going to talk about in the next class.

If you have a question about this or any other class, feel free to email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Academy at strivingforeternity .org. Also, you can go again to, I mentioned you can go to the store.

You can pick up our syllabus. The book four is $25. You can actually pick up,

I think, I don't know if it's on the website yet. It will be. We're going to start bundling things together so you can get all four of the systematic theology books for $75.

Or you can get all six of the current syllabuses for $100. So we're going to start doing things like that.

They'll be up there soon. But if you want to get the syllabus, go to the store and pick it up there. While you're at the store, you can pick up my book,

What Do They Believe? Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions. You can also sign up your church, hopefully, to host a

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. These seminars, we come into your church for a weekend and we will, in one weekend, eight hours, six sessions, we will teach you how to interpret

God's Word rightly. Some exciting things going on that we have. Let's put this one up.

We have the Reason Rally Outreach. Go to reasonrallyoutreach .org. We're going to be having, on Friday night, we're going to be having a conference.

We're going to have Ray Comfort from Living Waters, Matt Slick from CARM, and Striving Fraternity will all be involved.

And we will be training people up to reach the atheist. This is being heralded as the largest gathering of non -religious people in history.

And what we're saying is, help us share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. Saturday, we're going to have an outreach.

Not only us, but also Living Waters. On June 4th,

Living Waters is going to have the DC Outreach and we're working with them. It's not two separate outreaches.

We're all going to be outreaching at the same time. It's just that if you're part of the Friday night group, you come to the

Friday night conference, you get to hear Ray speak. Bible Thumping Wingnut is actually going to interview Ray Comfort on his new book and new movie.

We are going to play his brand new movie that has not been seen outside of very many people.

Very few people have gotten to see the movie. It's going to be coming out soon. He's going to play the first 10 minutes of this movie.

It's very good. I have seen the movie. It's going to be, I think, really exciting. It's called

The Atheist Dilemma. He's going to play for us Friday night. Matt Slick is going to give points on how to witness to atheists, how to deal with that.

I'm going to deal with the issue of what's the gospel, the doctrine of imputation, and how that's going to be essential to what we're going to do on June 4th.

Now, if you're there Friday night, that means you're going to get out on the streets at 9 o 'clock. Why? Because Living Waters has a meeting.

They're going to have a meeting Saturday morning at 9. What we're going to do is have that same meeting Friday night at our event that's hosted by Striving Fraternity.

That way, we can get out early and get to those good preaching spots, those good evangelism spots, get there early.

And then Living Waters is going to have their meeting. And then DC Outreach, they're going to come follow up and meet us.

So they're going to have more people that are going to come later, which is going to be kind of neat. All of a sudden, as the atheists start coming in, so will the

Christians, okay? And Ray's going to be filming during the DC Outreach. He's going to be filming for his new

TV show. He's going to do more filming for the Atheist Dilemma, I think. But he's also going to be filming for Weigh the

Master Season 5. Also, lastly is Jersey Fire is coming up. So I want to encourage you,

Matt Slick and myself, Justin Peters, the topic is the Word of God. These are going to be some great, great, great messages.

I encourage you to go to jerseyfire .org. Sign up for Jersey Fire. Encourage your friends.

Encourage your pastors. Encourage your church to come out to Jersey Fire.

That's in Toms River, New Jersey, July 8th and 9th, 2016. Come on out.

We're using fire in the biblical sense, by the way. We are trying to fire Christians up to warn the lost of the fire to come.

There is a judgment fire coming and that's why we need to warn them. Let's get out there and warn them of a fire to come.