Submitted To All Under the Authority of Christ

Here is a post from Aug 2008. I wrote this post after wrestling with leadership and so forth. This is where my paradigm for leadership really began to sink in and I became more and more convinced that the way leadership functions in Christianity today may not be the way it was intended to. 

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I say this  with all the humility I can muster. We are all submitted to each other but we are only under the authority of Christ alone.  This may be a radical statement to some and a normal practice for others; however, I want to convey this clearly. If we are to take the Priesthood seriously then we must embrace this statement recklessly.

Let me explain. In most church relationships, there is an authority and there are those that submit. However mature the believer might be,  this relationship never becomes reciprocal. The Leader will always lead and the submitter will always submit! We continue in these relationships perpetually and the only way to get out of the perpetual relationship of submission is to become a leader yourself; however that works in your specific assembly. Maybe you tell them you want to be an elder, or a deacon, or you start your own church, you will have to do something and have a status change to come from under someone’s submission and then you now assume the position of a peer to the leaders and an authroity figure to your old peers. Here are the imperatives by Paul again (I believe there is someone smart enough out there to write an entire book on this passage and still not scratch the surface Alan? Kieth? Hutch? Phil Fletcher?)

6 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Again if we are to obey these imperatives when we gather, something must functionally change in our local congregations. For the life of me I don’t understand why we just don’t. I talked to a good friend of mine and I asked him about this. I was asking why are we slack in fighting for and pursuing mutuality recklessly. He really couldn’t answer. I am saying we should equip all of the saints to function at a level where on any given Sunday a man could get up and address the assembly. I am not talking house church, lets take for example a nice sized evangelical biblically sound nationally know church. There are at least 2000 members. Are we saying that we don’t have at least 50 gifted individuals who could “preach” thus the church be known by its body not by its “pastor”? Can anybody tell me why we couldn’t function that way?

That’s preaching now lets take to what I am really getting at. In the typical church the leaders drive the church, while the members are passive passengers. All of the exhortation, encouragement, rebuke, edification, admonishment and teaching flows from the top down. I am proposing that we flow from the middle out. Where Christ is the center piece and we all equally stand eye level around Him. Christian leaders should be willing and even encouraging their members toward this type of priestly ministry and function. Women should function within these imperatives above, young children should function in these imperatives, parents to children and children to parents, husbands to wives and wives to husbands and ultimately leadership to congregation and the congregation to the leadership. This is nearly impossible in our celebrity type churches where if you are only lucky will get to meet your pastor in any real way and if you do meet him mutuality will never ever be established.

I say that to say this. When we meet we are to be under the authority of Christ and submitted to one another. Everyone! Everyone is to function this way. We are all priests and though priest have different functions the end goal is mutual edification and mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21 anybody)? Leaders are to take instruction just as much as they give it if the body is equipped properly and the priesthood is functioning as I believe it should (again my premise could be wrong). If I am doing all I can to ensure that those God place in my life is functioning at their best capacity eventually we should sharpen one another. It is funny that when we talk about sharpening it is usually pulpit to pew or pew to pew but never pew to pulpit or very rarely anyway. 

Now most may think I am crazy but as God opens doors for leadership this is my pursuit and goal. I want every priest who was brought into priesthood by Christ and not a school, or some human element to function at the level of their greatest potential. That means that they should be given to opportunity to instruct me, they should be given the opportunity to function freely in their gifts as God has so sovereignly given them by the Spirit and finally they should be given the opportunity to fulfill the imperatives found in Colossians 3. Not pew to pew but pew to pulpit.  I want to teach them everything I know so that eventually I don’t have one up on them but that we are walking hand in hand side by side not four steps behind and two steps to the right.  I will end that maybe I got this thing all wrong and I have a false premise but as I read all of the epistles the only one that has a hint of leader/non-leader submission is Hebrews and Alan Knox has broken this down in every way possible. and specifically here.

I pray that you are encouraged and you enjoy the Labor Day weekend.