Church Leadership

[Jerm]

Here's something I've been studying lately and would like some imput from you guys.  What you do you think is the "proper" model for church leadership i.e. bishops, priests, and deacons or pastors, elders, and deacons or a council of elders, etc.  Just curious and thought I'd ask.

P.S. I know some folks here prefer house churches and I'd love to hear y'alls opinions as well

[reFORMer]

There's no other way I'm aware of to normally meet as the Church but as an every member participation "free-for-all," not allowing anyone to be in charge but the Holy Spirit.  Of course, this has its own limitations and difficulties.  The simplified rule, if there is any, is to participate means you're subject to the critique of others.  In turn, you judge others' participation.  (This is based on 1 Cor 14:29-33.)  You give what you have and spar off each others' sharing.  We're here to love God and each other while we all grow into "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." (Eph 4:13)  People who don't get the foundation right will get the rest of it wrong too.  In the Bible it's called, "The simpicity of Christ."

Jesus is real.  Wonder why those who say they believe in Him can't seem to believe in His reality as much as a man on stage with a title . . . Being part of the Church means we already have leadership in the person of Jesus within and among us.  Any usefulness of someone proposing to serve God is based on how they are able to connect us, not to themselves, but to the living presence of Jesus.  Servants of God is to what I refer, not someone's "Ministry" of which we are only enablers.  By the Holy Spirit we are directly connected to the (Greek) kurios, "the Lord," the ultimate authority.  Actually, it's an intimate union.  Any other person claiming authority over us in the Church is someone in bed with God's wife telling us that to love Him we have to go through them.  I'm certain that's one of the worse places anybody can be.

The way Paul built was to qickly, after maybe 6 to 10 weeks, leave a group of new born believers with no one but the Holy Spirit in charge.  Obviously no one was walking long enough with the Lord to qualify as an elder (not that what many mean by that and related terms is what is meant by Scripture itself.)  Maybe a year or two later an apostle would stop by and recognize "elders."  That certainly did NOT mean he put somebody over the rest who would become an audience for him.  Each one -- this girl, that old man and the other over there -- having been used to lead forth by the Holy Spirit would hardly have allowed themselves to become so stifled, robbed of their gifts and blessings.  "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty!" (1 Cor 3:11)

your brother, James Rohde

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Amen. It's so hard to get through to people who don't have the revelation that when He put the 5 fold in the "church", He literally meant He put them IN the church, and the only thing going in the church is HIM IN HIS FUNCTIONS WITHIN US. He does not Lord over HIMSELF. Everyone on this board may not know it, but everyone on this board has one or more of those 5 fold functions deposited within them AS CHRIST. The hand of God is the kingdom of God manifested, and His hand is NOT FLESH, but Spirit.

When He manifests, He manifests THROUGH THOSE FUNCTIONS, with the appropriate working gifts of the Spirit. Man doesn't get to tell Him who He is in a believer, the SPIRIT tells the believer who He is in them. As usual, man superseded the wisdom of God and took that which was heavenly and made it into a NATURAL REPRESENTATION of the SPIRITUAL, which IS Christ. When these gifts of function are in operation within a body, ANY BODY ANYWHERE, unfettered by man's chains of religious patterns of bondage, HE APPEARS.

He appears in healing, in forming more of His body which is Spirit together in Spirit, pulling them in by fishing from the right side (which is Spirit/hand of God), puts others needs first, shares that which the Spirit has given with the others without recompense of reward.

Apostle = thumb/He establishes the church
Prophet = first finger/speaks those things that are not as though they were, builds up, tears down
Evangelist = middle finger/He goes out the farthest to get the lost sheep
Pastor = ring finger/He gives his life for the sheep
Teacher = little finger/He's the smallest so He can go inside the ear easily

Now; which one of those does man do better than Christ? Blessings....

[Molly]

The hand of God is the kingdom of God manifested, and His hand is NOT FLESH, but Spirit.

wow. nice.

Jesus stands at the right hand of God.  So he is God's right hand man.  And, in Christ, so are we.



Isaiah 52:10
The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

[martincisneros]

Apostle = thumb/He establishes the church
Prophet = first finger/speaks those things that are not as though they were, builds up, tears down
Evangelist = middle finger/He goes out the farthest to get the lost sheep
Pastor = ring finger/He gives his life for the sheep
Teacher = little finger/He's the smallest so He can go inside the ear easily

Now; which one of those does man do better than Christ? Blessings....

Not trying to be the fly in the ointment, so, let me preface my comment for clarity.  I'm not saying that man has done better up until now, but John 14:12 bothers me about absolutely anything that's not specifically related to the atoning/ransoming work.  I believe that better is always available.  I'm always expecting much more.  If I ever come across as arrogant about it, it's this verse and many similar/corroborating verses together with it that I teeter on being belligerent with our Lord about.  Not sure of how to share certain things that I've experienced that are a bit out there for even Pentecostals, but several times [particularly in relation to the Hosea 2:18; Jeremiah 31:27-28 covenant] I've outran Elijah and been stronger than Samson in the past, so I know that in the right contexts, the right motives, with the right heart, with the right preparation that absolutely all of it [and beyond] is available. 

And when I first met a friend who has since died, I prophesied to him for way over 4hrs.  Gave him details, details, details, details, that he knew that absolutely no one but the Spirit of the Lord could have conveyed.  It flowed like water from that same inner voice that makes my speaking in other tongues possible, but it was in English.  I do think that things have gotten soooo screwed up for 1500 years or so that ""Providentially"" God is using people as specialists in the Body to get things straightened out, both according to the New Testament pattern of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers, Encouragers, Supernatural Financiers, Gifts of Healings, Workers of Miracles, etc., etc., etc. and beyond the New Testament pattern to where each of these gifts are having to face the "all of the kingdoms of this world" temptation that Jesus had to face, just simply because things have been that amiss to where just to shatter the religious nonsense and to meet the needs of soooo many infinitely hurting people that in mercy He is promoting what some denominationally cessationist minded folks in the Church might balk at as being little more than shamanism. 

It's not the lying signs and wonders that we're warned about in Matthew, 2Thessalonians, 2Peter, Revelation and elsewhere.  He's having to hammer away at both a cold religiosity and a cold naturalistic humanism where in both cases the belief in a God that's that personal is always in an ever-declining mode.  1John 2 about having no need that anyone should teach one is in the context of the opening verses of 1John 3 where the New Earth is mentioned.  There are several ways that we can know that that's the way to interpret that, but briefly, his acknowledgement in that chapter of 1John 2 of spiritual fathers, spiritual adolescents, and spiritual children.  The implication of growing or of having grown indicates that since you embraced the Lordship of Jesus Christ and became totally possessed by the Holy Spirit (Colossians 3:17), you still haven't always been all dat since that initiation and emersion date or dates. 

The Scriptures are consistent about the fingers on the hand, as Cardinal put it, that gives the palm of the hand, which is the Church, it's mobility in the purposes of God.  The fingers bring into the hand everything that the hand is supposed to reach for, including additional building blocks for rebuilding as a bigger hand.  Which then builds the possibility for even bigger, stronger, more flexible, and easier to use fingers, or as Cardinal put it:

Apostle = thumb/He establishes the church
Prophet = first finger/speaks those things that are not as though they were, builds up, tears down
Evangelist = middle finger/He goes out the farthest to get the lost sheep
Pastor = ring finger/He gives his life for the sheep
Teacher = little finger/He's the smallest so He can go inside the ear easily

[Raggedy Anne]

There are many things about organized religion that I dislike.   I should probably just leave it at that. 
There is a scripture that says "Work out your OWN salvation with fear and trembling".  That's what I do.

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: If I understand what you're saying Martin, you're absolutely right, more is available. What no one wants to hear is that if those 5 are PERFECTED in individuals as CHRIST IS PERFECTED, then that which is in part is done away. The portions were never intended to be the end all of all. Pentecost brings on Tabernacles.

He has shown me that His intent afterwards (when we are no longer fragmented) is to join them back again male and his female, which is why the "church" is built upon the apostle and prophet. The "rib" is curved like a boomerang and must come back. He cast "her" (the church/soul of man) out just like you would throw a boomerang, knowing that "she" would return. That is why His side was pierced (the veil was rent), because those that were one with Him from the foundation are having to return as the rib/covering of the Father's heart (Christ).

Laying these things of Pentecost down is allowing Him to go in to the LAST GREAT FEAST (Tabernacles) IN SECRET (no one is looking at Him in your anointed flesh), although all the disciples at first entreat Him to go with them, as no man says at first that the new wine is better. But this is the beginning of the finishing work of the justification and sanctification of the soul, of making "her" a "virgin" again.

Then if both literal male and literal female have virgin souls and are joined by Him, those souls become the robe of Melchisedek, ie. Jeremiah 33 where a WOMAN (2 souls in union in Christ) will encompass a MAN (Christ). Thus it can truly be said, there He is in the midst of us, and the pattern of the cherubim on either side of the ark is fulfilled. This is why He sent the disciples out in twos (and conversely why they went in in twos into Noah's ark), and this is why we are to be blessed in our comings in and our goings out, because once again, it's all about HIM.

I hope this makes sense, because it's so hard to put into words sometimes, what has been seen. Blessings...

[Molly]

He has shown me that His intent afterwards (when we are no longer fragmented) is to join them back again male and his female, which is why the "church" is built upon the apostle and prophet. The "rib" is curved like a boomerang and must come back. He cast "her" (the church/soul of man) out just like you would throw a boomerang, knowing that "she" would return. That is why His side was pierced (the veil was rent), because those that were one with Him from the foundation are having to return as the rib/covering of the Father's heart (Christ).

All this talk about boomeranging ribs--are you somehow merging Adam and Jesus ?

The woman was taken from Adam's side and will be returned through Jesus' side?




19Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,

20By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

--Heb 10

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: It was the same pattern. When Christ died, the stony heart (a rib is made of calcium, a mineral) was taken out of man (out of Him as our type of man) to produce new life (heart of flesh/virgin soul) in the same sense as God taking a rib out of Adam to create new life (Eve). Blessings....

[Molly]

John 19:34
But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.


[pierced his] "side"


G4125
πλευρά
pleura
plyoo-rah'
Of uncertain affinity; a rib, that is, (by extension) side: - side.




Hebrews 10


19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.


"through" [his flesh]

G1223
διά
dia
dee-ah'
A primary preposition denoting the channel of an act; through (in very wide applications, local, causal or occasional). In composition it retains the same general import: - after, always, among, at, to avoid, because of (that), briefly, by, for (cause) . . . fore, from, in, by occasion of, of, by reason of, for sake, that, thereby, therefore, X though, through (-out), to, wherefore, with (-in). In composition it retains the same general import.





...and they shall be one flesh.

--Gen 2:24

[Nathan]

As a pastor of an organized church  . . . they don't consider themselves a denomination . . .they call themselves and association . . .personally, I really don't understand the difference . . .but anyway . . .I digress . . .

Since my personal experience of a paradigm shift in my own heart . . . I have sortof changed the church setting around a bit.  I've taken the pulpit off the platform, I've turned all the chairs "inward" so that people can look across at other people rather than at the one in the front . . . and I often explain that I don't see a congregation, but a family and the sanctuary is our living room . .when guests come over, they're allowed to share, ask questions, and comments . . .there was a post early in this thread that I kinda wanted to touch on and that was dealing with the "idea" of it being a free for all . . . .technically it is . . .it's free . . .for all.  But it's not chaos . . .I'm basically the facilitator . . .I bring the topic . . .lay out what I see with it . . .and the comments are others who expound, see a Scripture that affirms it . . .or simply rewords what I've shared in their own terms . . .but it's much more hands on for any who feel comfortable enough to just join in.