They say that ‘postmoderns’ don’t like authority. I think that I’m a prime example of that ideal. I felt this way before I even knew what the word postmodernity meant, or if it wasn’t even a real word. It’s kind of funny actually, I’m typing right now and postmodernity isn’t recognized as a word in Microsoft Word. I think I stopped liking authority as soon as I felt like authority was restricting what God called me to do. After a few instances of being told what not to do, I quickly shut down and didn’t like any sort of authoritative figure in my life.

I tried to run retreats for some youth in my hometown and I was told I was undermining other ministries by doing so. Myself along with the young adults started doing bible studies about inerrancy and biblical doctrines and I was told that I needed to stop because I am hurting people’s faith. I used to play music in bars with a few friends and I got looks and comments about how I should be in church instead. I didn’t encourage people to speak in tongues, in fact I had questions about it, and I was deemed not Pentecostal enough and anti-Spirit. It was amazing of some of the things that people in authority labelled me with. It wasn’t long before I simply couldn’t work along side of certain people anymore. Leaving for university was a good idea. It gave me space to think out the way I was heading and get away from people that did not encourage me to go further but only limited things I could do.

My experience with authority was great until it got uncomfortable for them. As soon as I started working outside of the confines of a certain church label I was brushed off. You would be surprised how many people care about their own church growth more than they do the kingdom. They will pull out phrases like ‘God gave me these people to shepherd and protect and save from leaving the flock’ to ‘you are undermining the ministry that God gave me and I don’t like it.’ The authority that I came under was more concerned with their own egos than they were the overall picture of God’s kingdom, and as soon as I stopped petting their ego I was useless to them. I have had to relearn how to come under authority. I could be a free-for-all forever and I needed to come under authority of people that were going to keep me in check for God’s Kingdom not theirs.

My experience with authority, and I’m speaking spiritual authority all throughout this post in my case, has greatly blurred the way I see authoritative structures. In some ways I think it helps me stay clear of those that are dangerous but it also sometimes causes me to miss some structure of authority in my own life. I’m beginning to understand it better, and its become easier and easier to come under authority of some people who I love and trust very much and I hope God continues to soften my heart and shape me to any authority he puts me under.

I share this, because I think a story like this is important for understanding power structures and the place they have in our life and my own. With this as a foundation it will help me understand better what lies ahead.

Inspired by a number of different events in my life I’ve been better trying to understand how I feel about groups, movements and institutions. By this I mean anything from what we call an ‘Emergent Church Movement’ to an institution like York University to a group such as a church. Some of my experiences are as follows.

1. I’m part of a corporation. It sounds fancy, but it’s really not. It’s four of us university students who wanted to run a conference and we needed something to filter money in and out of so we started up a corporation to keep us all even and safe. We called it Epiphaneia Network, and we ran the Evolving Church conference. The other three guys are amazing and I love working with them. We work amazingly well together and we are all great friends before we even decided to do something at such a calibre.

2. A few days ago I got to go out for dinner at a super fancy restaurant where each meal cost well over twenty bones with the President and Provost of Tyndale University. I was quite underdressed with my shorts and postal shirt on and the whole circumstance made me feel a bit weird. Most people in Canada have heard of Brian Stiller, he’s one of the more renowned, vocal and seen evangelicals in our country. We made a comment about Campolo because Chris wants to go to his school and Stiller wasn’t reluctant to look in his Blackberry for his person phone number. You see Stiller on TV all the time, he’s has always seemed untouchable to me, but here I was talking to him across the dinner table. For the record, he was asking us how we ran our conference, which was another weird feeling.

3. I’m planting a church with two of my closest friends, and the last thing I want to do is be a church that produces a product and everyone else consumes it like many of the churches I have experiences in the past.

4. Every time I think about large organizations like Microsoft, Nike, Pepsi or even large churches or renowned Christians I am amazed at how ‘well off’ they are. They all drive nice, if not amazing cars, live in pimped out houses and never go without whatever they need. I guess it makes me more sympathize those that go without as opposed to me getting angry with those that have too much.

I’ve noticed two trends that seem to encompass almost every well known person or group or movement. This is a general statement and I realize that many don’t fit into these, but I think underlying much of excuses that we have these two reasons are.

The first and most obvious is money. So many organizations, ministries and people are driven by their love for money and their desire for more. It amazes me what someone would do for a big buck as if the dollar will make them happier as it increases. People are willing to kill, humiliate and destroy people and their lives to increase their wealth.

The second is being known. I think this is my main issue. I think so many people and movements are known because they want to be known. They want the world to see them. They start blogs to brag about their theological standpoints. They preach in front of crowds, they write their name on everything, they network with people more important than them and the list never stops. Their driving desire is to be known to as many people as possible for as many good things as possible. Sometimes I question why I even have a blog, or why I feel the need to go and meet a speaker, and say my full name to them after they are done, hoping that maybe or just possibly they will remember my name somewhere along the line. I know many of my motives are pure, but I also know that some of them are tainted by money and by my desire to be known. This is just the beginning of where my mind goes from here. I want some more time to think this through properly. I just keep praying every day that God purifies my motives more and more as I start to get more involved in his kingdom and involved in business and with people around me.

Pernell from the FRWY asked a question on his blog a bit ago, and got some interesting responses. Some of them are along the lines of what I was saying about authority. This is the question he asked:

What should the role of the pastor be in this new culture in which we find ourselves? Or what characteristics or attributes should they have? What skills? What is important to you in terms of who leads your community of faith?

I thought I would post some of the responses that I liked and tease them out a bit.

to model loving God and loving each other in the community we find ourselves.
Posted by: wilsonian | Friday, November 04, 2005 at 11:23 PM

Hmmmm. Not sure I can answer that one clearly. I think we need to clarify between the old shepherd/sheep, I’ve got the answers/you’ve got the questions model to something a little more egalitarian. Along the lines of head seeker, fellow sheep who happens to take the point, etc.
Of course, this kind of conversation tends to open up the whole can of worms over whether or not these can be temporary positions, paid positions, etc. They tend to bore me, but they come up.
One other thought: Personally I’m drawn more to “reluctant leaders”. I’d be afraid of anyone who really wanted the job!
Posted by: Mike | Saturday, November 05, 2005 at 12:49 PM

if they like being called “pastor” i’m lookin elsewhere – the more they look like Jesus, the more they’re on. keep on tour guiding. ‘ deeply appreciate your .. whatever it’s called.
Posted by: steve | Sunday, November 06, 2005 at 02:17 PM

Someone who is willing to admit their faults and strengths. Someone who is able to say “I get lost too sometimes. I too get distracted and don’t always do the right thing”. Someone who will say “i was wrong and i’m sorry”.
Posted by: Kristen | Monday, November 07, 2005 at 12:46 AM

pulpit? if the pulpit was the primary vehicle to preach and teach the good news in the modern age, where is, or better yet, what is the pulpit in the postmodern era and beyond? how will we communicate the good news? where will it happen? and i’m not talking sure fire model that will be necessarily adaptable in every time and space, i’m just insanely curious (and hopeful) as to who and what God will use…
on a related note, i’ve got a hunch that this new era of church will also usher in and empower and new breed of clergy. where in the past this type of believer was sidelined due to the fact that the letters r.e.v. didn’t appear before their name…a royal priesthood if you will…a new age where the best and truest ‘ministry’ is done by all, not just the professional. these are the ‘pastors’ i’m most interested in…
Posted by: joe | Tuesday, November 08, 2005 at 01:36 AM

These posts help center in on more what I think a pastor’s job is. Not an authoritative, bossy role. I think that I have made my point in that I don’t think that an authority structure within the church is the way it is supposed to be. When talking about church and leadership structure, my friend Joe said something really good. He was putting a list together of the order the church should look and it looked something like this.

Community
Congregation
Ministry Leaders
Elders/Deacons
Pastors

Did you notice that pastors are at the bottom? Instead of the structure working its way up like an authority structure it is set up it works the opposite way. It works its way down where the people at the bottom of the list are charged with serving everyone above them and so forth. I think I’m done talking about authority. Maybe I need to move on to leadership and try and understand better how that will look. Authority as we know it in the western culture should not be found within the church. Christ came to bring a new Kingdom whose authority structure is much different than that of the worlds. The authority looks like a tree; with Christ as the vine and everyone else the branches. Or like a bride, with Christ as the husband.

I don’t believe authority figures in the kingdom are supposed to act authoritative with towards other people. All through the bible you see Jesus commending people to be servants, to consider others better than themselves and to put themselves at the end of the line. There is no reason anyone should assume that there should be some kind of structural hierarchal authority structure in the church where there is bosses and all this authority bossing around going on.

I thought I would do a little bit of studying on some of the usual verses that are thrown around as to why we need to obey authority. In Hebrews 13:17 it says “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that [is] unprofitable for you.” The word obey here in the Greek is peitho. This word doesn’t mean what the English dictionary says meaning to ‘carry out or to fulfill the order of.” Peitho out of a Greek Lexicon means: (I bolded some that i thought stuck out).

1) persuade
a) to persuade, i.e. to induce one by words to believe
b) to make friends of, to win one’s favour, gain one’s good will, or to seek to win one, strive to please one
c) to tranquillise
d) to persuade unto i.e. move or induce one to persuasion to do something

2) be persuaded
a) to be persuaded, to suffer one’s self to be persuaded; to be induced to believe: to have faith: in a thing
1) to believe

2) to be persuaded of a thing concerning a person
b) to listen to, obey, yield to, comply with

3) to trust, have confidence, be confident

Now I’ve said for a long time that influence over authority is the way to go. I’ve heard messages on showing how Jesus lived a life of influence over others and wasn’t just telling them what to do. I love these definitions though, and the author of Hebrews was on to something when he was telling his readers to peitho those that have rule over them.

This word ‘obey,’ takes on completely to meaning all of sudden. It puts responsibility not just in the person who needs to do the obeying, but in the person who is being obeyed. They need to live a life worth believing about. They need to live a persuasive life; they need to be trustworthy. It is up to the one with ‘rule’ to live a influencing, persuasive life. A persuasive life doesn’t need to demand anything, they don’t need to tell people what to do and boss people around. All they need to do is be a leader, lead by example and live a life worth following.

Authority in the Kingdom doesn’t come by authoritative measures. Authority comes from influence, persuasiveness and trustworthiness. If you have to demand followers, or convince someone to follow you; my guess is that you should switch tactics and start worrying more about living the kind of life that influence people to become better people not by spiritually handcuffing them into submission.

I’m trying to add some new things to the site. Last night I procrastinated from my work and spent sometime learning some new scripts and the result: a random quote generator. I get to add my own quotes (which I lost most of them when my computer crashed a few weeks ago), and thought there are few now I will constantly be adding to them. ALso, since I’m almost at 200 posts now I decided I should start organizing them in some sort of order to make this easy to find. So there is a catagory section, they are still in the midst of being organized but hopefully what is there will help you, that is right above the search bar.

There are times where submission to authority of a pastor needs to take place, and if not then you need to step down from where you are. A pastor is given a responsibility of running a ministry and shepherding a people. Spiritually, I don’t think that a pastor ever has ever kind of authority over anyone’s life: only Jesus Christ does. In a whole other realm, I can’t see any other way but than to obey those that are put over you.

When I was around seventeen and eighteen I was asked to come on board as the interim youth pastor of my home church. It was weird at time, but really I was pasturing not by myself but with a leadership team of four others. I got to speak, hang out with kids, plan events and do all that other ‘youth pastor’ stuff. After a while, as young as I was, I started seeing things that I wasn’t expecting to see. It was all the typical stuff that goes on in churches: church politics, things I disagreed with, questions no one could answer. The longer I was there the more disconnect I could see between me and the pastors and their vision. This wasn’t to say I was right and they were wrong in any specific case. They were just different.

There came points in working there where I was asked by the senior pastor to encourage or do something that I wasn’t comfortable with (any more). I tried to make them see why for a long time, but eventually it just ended in us seeing things very differently. In a case like this; I needed to submit to authority or leave authority. When someone is hired by someone (church or not); they are hired with the expectation that you are going to do what the boss (senior pastor) asks. This goes the same with volunteer jobs in churches, ministry heads etc. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, stating your case, trying to make people understand where you are coming from. When it comes down to it though, the pastor has to have the final say; and you have to listen or get out.

This isn’t one of those things where someone says “I don’t like what the pastor is doing so I’m quitting and checking out another church.” No matter what church we go to you aren’t going to like some things that a pastor does. I’m talking about when you are operating underneath the vision and mission of a particular church and the pastoral team does not think you are doing that right; it is your responsibility to fall in line with it or remove yourself from it. I don’t think its wrong to do either necessarily, I’m sure it would depend on the situation.

This is why commitment and possibly church membership I think holds some value (though I still don’t know how I feel completely about church membership, at leas the way it’s seen today). It creates a people that are operating underneath a certain mission and vision instead of random people all over the place trying to carry on the Kingdom’s jobs by themselves. It would make no sense for someone to be acting differently than the mission and vision and stay with the community; it would cause dissension all throughout.

So while I think that it is not a pastor’s duty to exercise authority (especially spiritual authority) over anyone self-willed. I do think that we need to come under authority of a pastor (or someone) voluntarily to bring unity to a group. This is a hard balance to come by for the leader and the follower. While the leader needs to learn to act as an authoritative leader without demanding authority and the follower needs to learn to submit without compromising what they believe to be the authority of Jesus Christ.

So this post may only relate to a select few people (unfortunately) who actually find themselves working in a church, running ministries and doing stuff underneath a specific church but I still think that it needs to be understood because there is no point in doing anything in the church if you are not willing to come under some kind of submissive authority (which is still to be defined) of someone that oversees you.

There is no doubt that authority has been abused throughout history. I can say the name Hitler and everyone cringes. Should this sort of authority be present in the church? Was it meant to be a dictatorship (even if it isn’t sinful)? Was the church meant to be lead by one man at the pulpit telling us what to do and think? Can a pastor just pull out verses from different places all throughout the bible to claim that we need to listen to him to stay within the will of God?

Most of us are familiar with verses in Romans 13, Hebrews 13 and 1 Peter 2 telling us to submit to the authorities over us. These verses are constantly used by pastors exhorting people in a congregation to submit to the authority of the pastoral leadership. I just finished reading a book called Undercover by John Bevere and he stated the same thing constantly all through the book. After reading the book I had the feeling that I just needed to listen to everyone that claimed authority over me, as long as it wasn’t counteractive to the Bible. Is this the way it should happen? Should the church be run as a dictatorship under the head pastor and work its way down to the members?

For a dictatorship to work, we need a dictator. I believe the church is meant to be a dictatorship. It is meant to have a king. This dictator’s name is Jesus Christ. Being part of the church is being part of a Kingdom, and a kingdom needs a king. This dictatorship was never meant to be run by a ‘pastor’ (a word that I think can be found once in the Bible if you’re lucky). The church is a dictatorship of one; Jesus Christ and no other.

I don’t believe a pastor has any right at all to claim authority over a member. Claiming authority seems to be elevating oneself above another. It gives the impression that someone else’s words are more important and more valuable than the person under authority’s words. The Pharisees thought they had this special authority over the Jewish people. Jesus certainly put them in their place. In talking to the people about the Pharisees he says this in Matthew 23:7-12:

They love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master 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 ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ.[b] The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Go through that verse again now and replace the word ‘rabbi’ with ‘pastor.’ I’ve seen pastors get mad because they weren’t respected and called ‘pastor so and so.’ Pastors and spiritual leaders are not meant to be the bosses of us by any means. They are meant to lead by example. They are meant to be the lowliest. They are not meant to lord over us but to lead by example (1 Pet 5:3, Hebrews 13:7, funny how these verses are in the same books and chapters as the verses that people that claim authority use). We don’t work our way up to being in a place of leadership, we work our way down.

Anyone who starts parading around with their title of ‘pastor’ or ‘spiritual leader’ and wants people to follow them under his authority has completely lost the image of the gospel. In fact, it’s the beginnings of a cult that shows power and authority in some other place rather than Christ alone. A true ‘pastor’ or ‘spiritual leader’ will have earned the respect from those under them. They will have descended (kingdom values) to a place of leadership because people love, trust and respect them. The people I would consider in leadership over me; I would probably die for them. For those that try to claim some sort of spiritual authority over me are usually busy wasting time trying to convince their congregations to live the right way. Leadership is extremely important and holds a very vital role in the church (which I will get to in upcoming posts). However, leadership is not meant to claim its authority over people, especially those that have been given equal rites in the Kingdom.