There are principles of wisdom, there are things that we learn just from the light of nature in terms of how we should organize ourselves as a church. Now, of course, there are things we learn from general revelation.
#Subvert authority how to
In special revelation-in Scripture-we find God’s specific directives that give us an understanding of who he is, of what we’re supposed to be as a church, of how to organize ourselves according to the gospel. There is special revelation, where God has made known to us his character and his law and the message of the gospel. So I would suggest that, like in all of life, God has revealed himself in two ways. What does that mean practically in terms of how we should think about the leadership structure of a church and how we go about making decisions as a church and as leaders? Does that mean that we literally only need the Bible and there’s nothing else that we could glean from broader leadership principles or anything that we can learn from “the secular world”? Is that the approach, or position, you would take, or should it be more nuanced than that? And if Scripture is sufficient to make the man of God equipped for every good work, well, how we organize the church is a good work and Scripture is sufficient to accomplish that task for us.
We are holding to the sufficiency of Scripture. We are submitting ourselves to the word of Christ. So I think it’s important to start there because it reminds us that church polity and what we do as a church is a theological task. He’s the one who established and created the church, so we have to look to him in order for how we should govern ourselves as a church, how we should live the Christian life within the church. Instead, we recognize that we’re a people who submit to the King, and so we’re supposed to follow the King’s directives. We’re not seeking to be innovative with how we do church.
We’re not trying to model ourselves off of the best business practices of the world or the best marketing strategies of our culture. I think it’s important to start there because it reminds us that the enterprise of the church-what we do when we gather as a church, what it means to be a church, how we’re seeking to live our Christian lives in the context of the local church-isn’t something that we’ve invented. Maybe some people are almost rolling their eyes as if that’s the Sunday school answer, so to speak, but why do you think it’s actually important to start there, to emphasize that fact before you get into the specifics of some kind of polity setup that you might believe in?
We belong to his kingdom, and he is the King of that kingdom, so he gets to set the boundaries for what we do and how we govern ourselves. He’s our Lord and our Redeemer, and so he sets the rules for how the church should function. I think the short answer to that question that everybody of every denominational stripe and every theological tradition would agree to is that Jesus is in charge of the church. And so maybe just to start off, I wonder if you could give us a short, succinct answer to this question: Who is supposed to be in charge of the church? We’re going to talk today about leadership and authority in the church context in the local church. Sam, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.
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