Been enjoying the discussions resulting from these two topics and Dave Black’s article,though in some ways, for me it’s “deja vu all over again.” I am a
“Campbellite”–i grew up in the group that started in the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, which has produced the liberal Disciples of Christ, the non-instrument Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Church of Christ) that I grew up in. I graduated from one of their Bible colleges in 1972. Unfortunately for my career prospects, while in college I found and read some of the writings of Alexander Campbell himself, and realized how far the self-titled “Restoration Movement” had fallen back from their beginnings. Campbell himself was strongly opposed to what in his day was called the “located ministry”–a paid pastor serving a local church. He was an elder in his own home congregation, but he and many of his fellow leaders in the RM of that day supported themselves and drew no salary from the church. Most of them had farms; Campbell also wrote and taught in a small college.
When I first stumbled on the modern house church movement on the Internet 3 years ago, I was struck by the similarities between what the HC people were saying and what the RM people were saying about 1809-1850. Unfortunately, the second and third generations of the RM got the idea that they HAD restored the New Testament church and drifted back into a lot of the old habits, including professional ministers (they don’t use “Reverend” and until lately didn’t call them pastors, but the title “Brother” is used in the same way–and not used for anyone else outside the church service. And to me, it it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck)
So what’s my point? I think this idea of going back to Scripture to see what it says about how we should “do church” is important enough to God that He brings it up again from time to time. Really, that’s what the Reformation of the 1500s started with, as well. 1517, 1809, 2000 (or thereabouts)–and each time it was not merely one man, but a coming together of various people beginning to think along the same lines until someone–Luther, Campbell, (I won’t try to pick a single HC spokesman)stands up, says in public what others are thinking in private, and stuff happens. And I think the tendency of the second and third generations to slip back into the old ways shows us something about fallen human nature–it doesn’t disprove the principle the first generation was trying to apply.
For the traditionalists among us, you need to make sure you don’t come under the same criticism Jesus said of the Pharisees–”…you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” (Matt.15:6, NASB) And remember also that Jesus’ words in Matt. 7:21-23 “depart from me, I never knew you” were not directed to unbelievers, but to people who thought they amounted to something in the Kingdom of God.
I’d better close this for now–if I keep getting this windy, I may have to get my own blog.

Phil Hawkins

I am also part of a “very-non-traditional-yet-still-traditional church”. It is interesting to see people grow and change and question and return and squirm and disagree and understand… but, thank God, his Spirit has maintained peace and unity in our fellowship. Unity with disagreement? Yep. Isn’t grace wonderful?

-Alan

Sorry that I have nothing to add other than “I couldn’t agree more”.

I started to write more, but erased it all as I am still struggling in this area — see, my husband is one of the pastor’s in our very-non-traditional-yet-still-traditional church (LOL).

Thanks for always challenging the staus quo with Biblical insight. And I appreciate everyone’s thoughts as well …

Keep up the good work and do not grow weary in well-doing!

Blessings!!

In my own journey, I did the second. I took everything off the drawing board, and started with Scripture, trying to reduce the amount of presuppositions as much as I could consciously do so, and this is where I’m at.

What’s interesting about that is that I often say, “I don’t recommend that everyone do this” when talking about that, but I’m starting to wonder if I should change that perspective. Maybe I should encourage more people to do it.

The reasons why I usually put that disclaimer are sort of like this:

1. It will throw you for a loop if you’re not ready for some radical changes in thinking. In other words, I think it could, depending on the person, cause a crisis of faith. I know it really shook me for a little bit of time.

2. If, in any way, you derive either your income or self-worth from working in a church, it could be very frightening to consider a situation where your whole vocation could change.

For me, this second one was a bit easier because, at the time I chose to rethink everything “from the ground up”, I was only part-time on a church staff. I was not the senior pastor, nor was I intimately involved in the actual “running” of the church.

However, it still ended up being a huge deal for me because right about the time I started thinking through all of this, I got laid off from my $65/hr job writing software for the US Dept of Labor and ended up only finding a $15/hr job working for a small computer firm. So, instead of just being a little extra cash, the money I was making from the church suddenly seemed real crucial.

It was about a month after that layoff that I started feeling convicted about salaried positions. I told the Lord, “If you ever let me pastor a church again, I will not take a salary for it, but will trust you to provide through other means.” And the Lord said to me (I am not kidding here), “That’s great. But what about the salary you’re taking now?” Ouch!

The next week, I told the treasurer to stop cutting my paycheck, and not to tell anyone. To this day, I have no idea if the pastor of that church even knows that I stopped taking a paycheck. He never asked, and I never brought it up. But I can tell you that the last three or four months I worked at that church before moving here to NC were the most freeing months of ministry I had ever experienced to that point. I felt like I truly was working for God and God alone, and not for anyone else.

I’m very hesitant to even share that story here, because I do not want to appear to be boasting. This was completely a God thing, and He gets all of the glory for it. But I share it here in this context because I want to make sure that people understand this is not completely theoretical for me.

While it is true that I didn’t have to wrestle through these thoughts while being “the pastor” of a church, it still was a process of wrestling that took place, with very real consequences in my life. And my goal at the time was to try to find a church (or plant a church) to pastor, so I still had to work through my own dreams for the future.

Having said that, I would not trade any of that for the biggest, highest-paid pastoral position in the world. And that is largely the passion that drives this blog.

steve

I love listening to you guys! The conclusion, that Alan and Gordon just agreed upon is so “organic”!

In response to Rod, I wonder if “rebellious children” is an elder qualification that isn’t “normative” for today. This is the problem with saying something is “cultural” as an explanation for why we don’t do it. Philemon doesn’t condemn slavery, yet I don’t keep slaves, and my wife doesn’t wear a head covering, though 1 Cor. 11 clearly says she should. I see those two practices as cultural.

Yet, isn’t a man’s relationship to his children and his ability to bring them to an understanding of life in the spirit a measure of what he understands about love?

I know the flip side of the discussion is that children must live their own lives, find and express their own faith and make their own mistakes without blaming the parents.

“Normative” and “cultural” are useful but difficult terms.

Rebellious children not a measure of the man? I go with scripture on that one!

In the original post, you asked for more information concerning the journey that my fellowship is taking. I’ll start with my own journey. I was a very traditional Baptist… and a very happy Baptist.

I took a required seminary class called “The Ministry of Worship.” Something surprising happened when I began to study what Scripture says about worship, specifically in regard to what I normally called “worship.” I think that was the beginning of my journey to find out what Scripture says about the church; specifically what church is, how the church should act, what the church does when it gets together.

As I learned, I talked about this with others, and it seemd that many people around me were considered the same things. We’ve encouraged and pushed one another to continue examine Scripture apart from the “institutional lens.”

I hope this is a good start…

-Alan

I think I understand the distinction that you are making between extra-biblical and un-biblical. Either way, if God does not expect certain things from leaders (i.e., a seminary education), then we should not expect this either.

Steve,

haha… very funny!

Alan,

Ignore him…

- Alan

Talk amongst yourselves. (Alan, that shouldn’t be too hard for you…)