Should Members Obey or Submit to Church Leaders?

[John]

Originally Posted by Igzy

Turns out the ways things are done in "Christianity" are the healthiest and most biblical.

There there are a variety of ministries (1 Cor 12:5) serving many different churches. These churches are led by leaders who have the right and obligation to vet ministries for the sake of those they lead (Heb 13:17; Rev 2:2). Although members are charged to obey and submit to leaders, this charge is not absolute (Acts 5:29). A leader is no longer your leader if you move from his church to another, nor if his words violate your conscience.

Paul's attitude reflects that of one who understood that churches had the right to question his ministry (2 Cor 6:11-13; cf. Rev 2:2). Paul spends half of 2 Corinthians appealing to the Corinthians to consider his ministry trustworthy and worthwhile. But he stops short of commanding them to submit to him. This shows he knew they had the right to reject him if they viewed his ministry as damaging.

Igzy,

I was bothered by the quoted post from you. Let me try and get out the problems that I have with it, and maybe you can help me with some explanation or correction.

To begin, you move from the universal statement that [all] things done in “Christianity” are the healthiest and most biblical, which seems to be put in juxtaposition to the way that things were done in Witness Lee’s Local Church. I would agree that some things done in “Christianity” are better (more healthy and, possibly, more biblical) than some things done in the Local Church; but, I would not agree that all things are best.

I don’t want to go too far in my comments, since I don’t know how universally you really intended to go with your statement, even though your statement went all the way. For one thing, I don’t know for sure what you meant by “Christianity.” I know that you seemed to be playing off Witness Lee’s usage, and he applied it derogatorily to everything Christian that was not a part of his Local Church; but, I hope you do not believe that everything in all of established Christianity is healthier and more biblical than all things that were done in the Local Church.

After this all-encompassing opener, you presented us with a discussion of leaders. By your presentation, it seems that you feel that the way that Christianity “does leaders” falls into the category of being “the healthiest and most biblical.” The way that much of Christianity controls the way that leaders function is generally healthier, I would say, than the way that the Local Church does it; but, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s the healthiest. As to being the most biblical, that would be really difficult to prove, I would think, and I disagree that it’s the most biblical.

For myself, I admit that I do not know all about how Christianity does leaders. The Roman Catholics do it one way, and the Brethren do it another. There are surely unhealthy aspects to the Catholic way, as a number of abused Catholics have attested. There are leaders in other Christian groups that have been accused of abuses against their members. In fact, as one person recently wrote to my wife on this forum about The Thread of Gold, many Christians outside of the Local Church have experienced abusive churches (and these should be considered a part of the Christianity that you appear to be endorsing as a whole). After my experiences with the leaders in the Local Church and experiences with leaders in a large Bible church, I would state that it is the leaders and the leadership model that is a large part of the problem. In my opinion, these few examples refute your proposition that “the ways things are done in ‘Christianity’ are the healthiest.”

As to your claim that the ways Christianity does things are the most biblical, let me put forward a few comments about your statements regarding leaders. Before I do, however, I will state that I do not think that the Bible mandates that all churches must have leaders in a leadership structure like I have seen and heard about in Christianity. (Of course, I do not presume to know about all leaders and all leadership structures in all of Christianity.)

Now, on to what I disagree with in your presentation as regards it being biblical. First, I do not see that Hebrews 13:17 supports leaders having the obligation to vet ministries as you claim:

Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you (KJV).

As I hope that you will agree, the verse does not address vetting ministries at all. Therefore, this claim, so far as you have tried to show, is lacking in biblical support.

Second, I noticed that you did not give a biblical reference for the following statement: “members are charged to obey and submit to leaders.” I could assume that you would use Hebrews 13:17 to support it, since maybe it was what you meant to do when you used it to try to support vetting. Reading what the King James translators did with it sure seems to authorize some kind of heavy-handed ruling and obedience. Unfortunately, this verse has been used, I think, by leaders in some Christian churches to force submission, producing an environment in which abuse can take root and grow. The problem with leaning on this verse is that the translation is grossly inaccurate and does not actually support rendering obedience to church leaders. The literal Greek goes like this:

be you being persuaded to the ones leading you and be you deferring (scripture4all.org).

In the Greek, then, there is a whole different meaning than the one that had been told to me in the past. It is much less forceful of a statement and is about persuading and deferring, not about obedience and submission. Note that the Greek does not even recognize the permanency of leaders but uses “the ones leading you,” which could be interpreted as a fluid term (that is, I lead in this situation today, and you lead in that one tomorrow). Regardless of how you would interpret that phrase, the ones leading us are to be persuading us, not lording it over us, not insisting on their authority, not expecting us to agree with them, not thinking that they own the church and can dictate who can speak, etc. If you know of some other verse that clearly requires Christians to submit to church leaders, please share it with me. Until then, it seems that this claim, too, is not biblical.

My 1st Corinthians 14 has no vetting of speakers and no required submission of one brother to another, regardless of one’s giftedness or functioning, even if one happens to be one who is leading. Instead of one person determining what others are allowed to hear in a church meeting, the hearers are allowed to hear all who would speak and are to be those discriminating among what is spoken. No, I would definitely disagree with the idea that Christianity has it right with regard to leaders and their actions, especially in church meetings. In the large Bible church that I attended, I once heard the senior pastor say from the podium that he was very careful about whom he allowed to speak from his podium. This was directly after one from the congregation, during a Sunday-morning meeting, had given a testimony that had been pre-approved and scheduled. This was an example of absolute control by a pastor over his meeting. This is very far away from biblical, in my opinion; and, yes, the Local Church, at least in theory, had it much healthier and much more biblical as far as meeting theory goes, even if they didn’t usually practice what they preached.

To end on a less polemic note, I do agree with your last paragraph about Paul. What I would suggest is that he was acting in accordance with Hebrews 13:17 according to the literal Greek. He was trying to persuade the Corinthians. To sum up, this is the same way in which ones who are leading in a church should be acting, as those taking the time to persuade, just as any other brothers might do, rather than those who expect their words to hold absolute sway and effect obedience.