Tuesday, July 26, 2005
authority and accountability
One of the oft heard lines in churches like our's is, "I have the right to be heard and to vote as a member of this church."
What this line reflects is more of an autonomous individual than a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is most likely one of the great downfalls within the American church.
This leads to a question, then, about the role and the authority of a pastor as a leader. My ordination vows and my installation covenant at Fairlawn-West say I am to "preach and teach" the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when I arrived at F-W there was very little if any respect or deferrence to the role of a pastor. That has changed, but not totally. I still don't think folks really understand the role of the pastor. And they do not submit themselves in anyway to the preaching and teaching of the pastoral office. Many don't even know the foundation of the Bible, yet insist that as a "member" of this church they better be able to keep their right to vote.
When we function like that, we lose any sense of spiritual maturity or eldership. We are unsure of what is authoritative among us. And thus, we defer more via democratic vote authority to the lowest common denominator or the weakest in spiritual maturity among us. Thus, we find ourselves in the quandry of whether we are first a spiritual body or a democratic based social organization.
In the military, in corporations, even in the Boy Scouts its clear that leadership authority is to be respected and used to learn from. In the classroom teachers and students understand the role each is to play. Teachers have the responsibility to teach, but also the responsibility to evaluate the students. Yet in the church the pastor and spiritually mature elders are given little latitude to play out their role in teaching and preaching the Gospel. They are more often than not looked upon as one more voice in the mix of voices allowed to express their opinion in this democratic organization. Thus there is great confusion within the body because the authority for leading and teaching is watered down with the sense that "everyone" is authoritative. Even those who have no clue about scripture, the ancient traditions of the church or how to live in a truly centered spiritual life.
So, which is it? Are we a spiritual growing body which is led and taught by those called to be our elders, preachers and teachers? Or are we first of all a social, charitable organization which is guided by democratic votes at congregational meetings where members of whom not all have attended worship regularly or even more so, have not taken part in edification and nurture of their spiritual life within the body of the church, set the direction of the mission and vision of the church? My sense is we have opted more for the latter because we don't trust our leaders...particularly our pastors. And because I see that widespread, I don't take it personally. Yet, as the pasatoral leader of this particular congregation, it causes concern for me and at times, confusion.
It has been clear that some folks within our church from the first few months I arrived here 10 years ago never saw me as a pastoral preacher and teacher. They were more insistent on how they wanted the church to be run or kept rather than to have any openness to the authority of the pastoral role. That has shifted I would say about 145 degrees since then, but we still are not clear about this as a body/church. We still think that we need to spend more time protecting the rights of the individual rather than to promote spiritual growth and accountability for all within the rule of obedience to Christ our LORD. We are confused between being a voluntary democratic organization and being obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. How are we to sort that out? More often than not we don't sort it out for fear of offending someone or for fear of raising a rucus in the congregation. This is contrary to what Jesus, the disciples, the leadership within the early church and the Apostle Paul did. But how would we know if we haven't submitted ourselves to the discipline of the study of scripture and the Lordship of Jesus Christ?
The demise of the American church is that it adopted more of the democratic principles of freedom of speech and religion than spiritual rootedness in Jesus Christ. It became more a secular democratic organization than a spiritually centered, disciplined body led by those to whom we give authority to lead and teach us.
We also opted more for the individualism of American culture. Yet the historic and the biblical church functioned in expression, in learning, and in practice more as a body...as a community. This is hard for us to understand...again probably because we haven't studied our true past either biblically or as a church out of the Reformed tradition (all the parts of the UCC come out of the Reformed Calvinist tradition). But we have all learned and functioned in U.S. civil society so we defer to that way of life because that is what we know. In that society the emphasis is on individual freedoms including the right to vote. That does not necessarily always fit with the values of the body of Christ. And as I said above, there are bodies within the U.S. society whom we give room not to function with the emphasis on the individual e.g. military, corporate structures.
In Christ, we were made free. When we choose to follow Christ, we give up our freedom to be who we want to be and become obedient servants of our Lord Jesus Christ under the sovereign rule of God our Father. I submit that this is the next part of the journey that we face as a church. To sort this out and to become mature enough to trust spiritual elders to guide us and to give our life totally over to Christ. This will require great discipline within the freedom Christ gives us. There will be some compromises. However, I suspect, as we study and learn our spiritual roots, we will be confronted more than we expect by a rigor and a discipline of following Jesus. That's what precisely leads us to not only live in Christ, but also to die and rise in him as well. None of this makes sense. It sounds foolish. Precisely!!!
Grace and peace,
David Loar
What this line reflects is more of an autonomous individual than a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is most likely one of the great downfalls within the American church.
This leads to a question, then, about the role and the authority of a pastor as a leader. My ordination vows and my installation covenant at Fairlawn-West say I am to "preach and teach" the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when I arrived at F-W there was very little if any respect or deferrence to the role of a pastor. That has changed, but not totally. I still don't think folks really understand the role of the pastor. And they do not submit themselves in anyway to the preaching and teaching of the pastoral office. Many don't even know the foundation of the Bible, yet insist that as a "member" of this church they better be able to keep their right to vote.
When we function like that, we lose any sense of spiritual maturity or eldership. We are unsure of what is authoritative among us. And thus, we defer more via democratic vote authority to the lowest common denominator or the weakest in spiritual maturity among us. Thus, we find ourselves in the quandry of whether we are first a spiritual body or a democratic based social organization.
In the military, in corporations, even in the Boy Scouts its clear that leadership authority is to be respected and used to learn from. In the classroom teachers and students understand the role each is to play. Teachers have the responsibility to teach, but also the responsibility to evaluate the students. Yet in the church the pastor and spiritually mature elders are given little latitude to play out their role in teaching and preaching the Gospel. They are more often than not looked upon as one more voice in the mix of voices allowed to express their opinion in this democratic organization. Thus there is great confusion within the body because the authority for leading and teaching is watered down with the sense that "everyone" is authoritative. Even those who have no clue about scripture, the ancient traditions of the church or how to live in a truly centered spiritual life.
So, which is it? Are we a spiritual growing body which is led and taught by those called to be our elders, preachers and teachers? Or are we first of all a social, charitable organization which is guided by democratic votes at congregational meetings where members of whom not all have attended worship regularly or even more so, have not taken part in edification and nurture of their spiritual life within the body of the church, set the direction of the mission and vision of the church? My sense is we have opted more for the latter because we don't trust our leaders...particularly our pastors. And because I see that widespread, I don't take it personally. Yet, as the pasatoral leader of this particular congregation, it causes concern for me and at times, confusion.
It has been clear that some folks within our church from the first few months I arrived here 10 years ago never saw me as a pastoral preacher and teacher. They were more insistent on how they wanted the church to be run or kept rather than to have any openness to the authority of the pastoral role. That has shifted I would say about 145 degrees since then, but we still are not clear about this as a body/church. We still think that we need to spend more time protecting the rights of the individual rather than to promote spiritual growth and accountability for all within the rule of obedience to Christ our LORD. We are confused between being a voluntary democratic organization and being obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. How are we to sort that out? More often than not we don't sort it out for fear of offending someone or for fear of raising a rucus in the congregation. This is contrary to what Jesus, the disciples, the leadership within the early church and the Apostle Paul did. But how would we know if we haven't submitted ourselves to the discipline of the study of scripture and the Lordship of Jesus Christ?
The demise of the American church is that it adopted more of the democratic principles of freedom of speech and religion than spiritual rootedness in Jesus Christ. It became more a secular democratic organization than a spiritually centered, disciplined body led by those to whom we give authority to lead and teach us.
We also opted more for the individualism of American culture. Yet the historic and the biblical church functioned in expression, in learning, and in practice more as a body...as a community. This is hard for us to understand...again probably because we haven't studied our true past either biblically or as a church out of the Reformed tradition (all the parts of the UCC come out of the Reformed Calvinist tradition). But we have all learned and functioned in U.S. civil society so we defer to that way of life because that is what we know. In that society the emphasis is on individual freedoms including the right to vote. That does not necessarily always fit with the values of the body of Christ. And as I said above, there are bodies within the U.S. society whom we give room not to function with the emphasis on the individual e.g. military, corporate structures.
In Christ, we were made free. When we choose to follow Christ, we give up our freedom to be who we want to be and become obedient servants of our Lord Jesus Christ under the sovereign rule of God our Father. I submit that this is the next part of the journey that we face as a church. To sort this out and to become mature enough to trust spiritual elders to guide us and to give our life totally over to Christ. This will require great discipline within the freedom Christ gives us. There will be some compromises. However, I suspect, as we study and learn our spiritual roots, we will be confronted more than we expect by a rigor and a discipline of following Jesus. That's what precisely leads us to not only live in Christ, but also to die and rise in him as well. None of this makes sense. It sounds foolish. Precisely!!!
Grace and peace,
David Loar
