“But it shall not be so among you.” (Mark 10:43)
- “Polity” – a form of organisation or process of government or constitution; from Latin politia from Greek polis ‘city’ (OED)
- “Church Polity” – is a matter of “the Nature, Powers, Ordinances, Discipline, and Government of the Christian Church” (James Bannerman)
- “Govern” – rule or control with authority; influence or determine; constitute a standard, principle or law for; influence or determine; from Latin from Greek for ‘steer, rule’ (OED)
- “authority” – the power or right to enforce obedience; delegated power; influence; from Latin for ‘author’ (OED)
Before we get into discussions of church polity we thought it would be helpful to reflect more generally on what power and authority mean. Definitions are important and particularly when they are not just matters of linguistics but matters of how Christians are to do things differently to the world. The danger is that God's people unconsciously carry normal non-Christian understandings and connotations and feelings about these things into our discussions which starts everything off on the wrong footing.
Power among the pagans
When we asked apprentices in a session at iServe Africa ministry training the question of ‘What constitutes a leader?’ and ‘What do people normally think of when they think of a leader?’ we got the following responses:- Ability to influence others – often through financial giving
- Hence will usually need to be wealthy or in control of resources and able to disburse them
- Influence of others may often be manipulation – i.e. towards aligning people with the leader’s personal goals rather than aligning them with corporate good or a higher good
- Position and tile – especially the idea of being positioned ‘above’ others
- Authority may be tied closely to family, clan or ethnic group for whom the leader is representative
- Power consisting in the ability to command others, demand loyalty and make unilateral decisions. Asking other people’s opinions, taking advice from others and incorporating other points of view is seen as weakness/indecisiveness.
- Words must not be challenged. Words express the person so to challenge words/ideas is to challenge the person.
- Good with words and rhetoric in public speaking. Persuasive. Charismatic.
- Confident. Unashamed. Never wrong.
We naturally think in terms of hierarchies. We naturally think that people ‘further up’ that hierarchy are more important / better off / higher status / higher worth / higher value than those ‘lower down’. It is a self-evidently good thing to be ‘higher up’. We equate role with benefits and significance. Sarah Allen, discussing feminist demands for equal pay and equal representation in parliament, judiciary and business comments, “The premises underlying all are: that women are valued only when they work in powerful jobs” (Everyday Sexism Revisited, Evangelicals Now, Dec. 2016). This is what gives such heat to the debate about women’s ordination and the discussion of whether women should submit to their husbands – through the world’s ‘lens’ this is not only about whether women may be denied access to the ‘benefits’ of power but also whether women are ‘worth’ the same as men or whether they are lesser beings.
Jesus says: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them” (Matt. 20:25; Mark 10:42). D A Carson, comments that ‘lord it over’ is not a great translation. ‘Exercise lordship’ would be better (similarly at 1 Pet. 5:3). The point is not the manner or abuse of leadership position but “that the very structures themselves cannot be transferred to relationships among his followers” (Carson, Matt. 13-28, Expositor’s Bible Commentary). So Jesus is saying that the whole idea of people being ‘above’ other people, the pyramid model – that structure of society that is so normal in the world that it seems obvious – that should not be imported into the church.
Power in the church
Within the church, power undergoes an inversion, a levelling, a relativizing, a d, a change of manner, means and purpose.1. Inversion
Jesus says: “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43-44). Similarly, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). All our categories are turned upside down; all our definitions are redefined; all the connections we make between identity, authority and position are shaken. To go up is now to go down and vice versa. As Andy Lines said to the new CMS director at his inauguration – “You are becoming the lowest of the low; the servant of the servants of the servants of the servants of God.” We easily turn ‘minister’ into a title or a position or an honour – in so doing ironically bringing back in the pagan idea of leadership. But if we remember the degraded status (or non-status) of a slave in the ancient world – if we had this fully in mind when we thought of a pastor or leader – then maybe fewer people would be clamouring for this ‘bottom job.’
2. Levelling
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah (Matt. 23:8-10). There is no career ladder in the kingdom. The Father and the Son have the ‘top job’ and then there is the brotherhood of believers. As Harrison put it the other day, “You’re never going to be promoted to be God.” There is the Lord of the harvest and then there are simply the workers in the harvest field (Matt. 9:38). Does that mean there’s no leadership or teaching or instructing in the church? There is, but it is of a completely different order to Jesus’ authority and teaching of us. When we teach and lead one another it is horizontal. We are all depraved sinners and we are all justified by Christ alone. At the foot of the Cross we are all on the same level. We lead as brothers encouraging brothers to follow Christ’s leadership. We teach as brothers pointing brothers to Jesus and his words. And those who are not doing the leading or the teaching are equally valuable members of the body. The mouth is not greater than the feet or the ear (1 Cor. 12). The elders are addressed in 1 Peter 5 as a subset of the whole church of elect exiles addressed in 1 Peter 1. They are to shepherd the flock ‘amongst them’ (1 Pet. 5:2) – that is they are first sheep themselves then they have a special oversight and leadership role in respect to the other sheep.
3. Relativizing
Kevin Vanhoozer, notes that the authority of humans is never absolute authority in the true sense. Only God is the author and full authority. Any human authority is a derived, delegated, secondary authority or “authorization” (e.g. Rom. 13:1). “To be an authority is to be authorized by something or someone beyond oneself… To have authority is to exercise an office and to do so because someone authorized it.’” (Biblical Authority After Babel, p. 86 [RT Aimee Byrd]). Furthermore, authority in the church is a mediated authority – through the Word of God. In a quote that I can’t trace, someone said, “The model of authority in the New Testament church is not the congregation under the authority of the pastor but the pastor and the congregation under the Word of God.” You see this in Acts 17 where Paul refers (or defers) to the Scriptures as his authority and the Bereans then don’t take his word as the infallible word of the Man of God but check it against the real authority – the Word of God. It is this Word that has ultimate authority over lives and it is this Word which alone can really work a change in human hearts (1 Thess. 2:13). The biblical church leader knows that in himself he has neither the authority nor the power to do that.
4. Distribution
There are a number of ways in which the power and authority of the church leader is further relativized and restricted. One way is with the prevalent NT model of the plurality of elders. Rather than one kingly leader there is a distribution of power and authority and the implication of shared responsibility and roundtable discussion (cf. Acts 15:6). Another way is in the division of deacons and elders with a corresponding division of financial and administrative responsibilities from the task of being devoted to prayer and the word (Acts 6). This is highly interesting when you compare it with the worldly model of power we started with where power and influence is wielded very largely through control of finances and resource distribution. And a further way that the power of the church leadership is circumscribed is through the authority of the congregation as a whole. If the congregation has the power to apply church discipline to a pastor or elder (because he is after all a member of the congregation) then this puts a check on his authority.
5. Change of manner
There is a beautiful picture of the manner with which a Christian leader should exercise his ministry in 1 Thessalonians 2. There Paul is very clear than he has ‘authorization’ from God himself – he is not trying to please men but God (v4). This frees him up to genuinely love others (rather than using them to boast his own ego). Instead of asserting his authority he is like a nursing mother caring for little children (v6-7), “being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (v8 cf. v17; 3:1, 8-9). There is leadership but it is that of a loving father – exhorting, encouraging, comforting, urging in the gospel. As Charles Bridges notes, even Jesus who taught with an authority than none of us has in ourselves, still spoke gracious words (Luke 4:22). He did not shout or rant or break a bruised reed (Isa. 42:2-3).
6. Change of means
While the main means of exerting power and influence in the World are political strategizing, strategic planning, hierarchy, financial control, labour control (the ability to hire and fire), ethnic appeal, charismatic rhetoric and manipulation, in the Church things should be quite different. The main means of leadership in the church are: a) the preaching and 1-to-1 ministering of the Word of God (mentioned above); b) the right administration of the sacraments (which includes the barring of those under church discipline); c) the power of exemplary living, especially holiness, home life, humility and hard work (e.g. 1 Pet. 5:3; 1 Thess. 2:9-10); and d) the rebuking, refuting and barring of false teachers (Acts 20:28; Titus 1:9-11).
7. Change of purpose
This may be the most significant shift of all – the shift from power and authority having a self-centred purpose (to accumulate money and/or honour for myself) to a new purpose to build others up and helps them to flourish. Commenting on Genesis 1:28 Vanhoozer notes, “authority over the earth has nothing to do with imposing one’s will to power on creatures or creation. On the contrary, God authorized the first couple ‘to accomplish a particular task, to act in a particular capacity, to seek a particular end” (Biblical Authority After Babel, p. 87). At the end of 2 Samuel, the shepherd king David sings that, “When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules over people in the fear of the God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.” He is prophesying ultimately of Jesus but the point is that power, exercised in a godly way, can be a very good thing. We are so used to seeing power abused that we find it hard to imagine but the NT speaks of an authority that builds up (2 Cor. 10:8; 13:10). This is ministry not as a project to build up self but rather to build up others – to work for their joy and faith in Christ (2 Cor. 1:24 cf. Phil. 1:25), to be willing to say hard things out of love (2 Cor. 7:8-9), to be spent in preaching Christ from the Scriptures (2 Cor. 4).
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