Eldership

[aron]

Originally Posted by Peter Debelak

Formal church structure, it seems to me, is logically contrary to the New Covenant.

You cannot say there is a prescription of obedience to anyone other than Christ and still maintain that there is, in fact, a New Covenant wherein the only Head of the Body is Christ - who indwells every believer and makes them into the new priesthood.

That does not mean that Christ, within each believer, will not lead a believer - even potentially all believers - to enter into a particular structural arrangement - but that is a description of someone obeying Christ within - not a prescription of obeying a normative structure. Some may say this is "mere semantics" - I say it is absolutely not.

You got my vote on this one, and kudos to you for stating what I have inchoately held in mind for some time, and have tried to stammer out to all and sundry.

Ad hoc structure is one thing - there are always situations that need structure. Someone to wait on the tables, someone to study the word for next week's meeting. But to formalize the process quenches the leading of the Spirit, and ruins our ear for Christ. We end up with the Rule Book (Bible), and the Designated Promulgators of the Rules. Sounds a lot like the Scribes with the scrolls of Moses and Isaiah, and we know how that turned out!

Every time I come into a "room" with Hope and TJ present I am aware of my "elders", and I do acknowledge that. But to formalize is to formaldehyde-ize God's living and vital (and adaptable) arrangement. I don't like that. (Most folks probably know this already, from reading my posts. But I'm happy to repeat myself!).

Look at John's letters to the seven assemblies of the called-out ones in Asia. Six out of the seven are called to repent, only one is asked to hold fast. Lest you think these collections of saints are not a representative sample of a wider problem, read Revelation 1:3: "Blessed are those who read the words of this prophecy, and who keep them." John is writing to us all.

If Diotrephes had not been there, wanting to be first, someone else would have stepped in and filled the role quite nicely, I am sure. John and James had been there before, wanting to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus; John now was aware how deep the problem was. It was rooted in the fallen human nature. The old man had waltzed into the New Age of Christ, and his formalization of the gatherings of saints exemplified this tendency to build things in his own image, try as he might to replicate God's Christ.