One of the things that I often think about is Church
Government. By this I mean how we structure and run our
churches and the organisations that they are a part of. One
of the reasons that I often think about this is that for me when I
read the bible there seems to be a disconnect between what
scripture teaches us about church leadership and government and
what the current reality is. Currently no matter what
denomination you are a part of the structure of the church is
largely hierarchical with ultimate responsibility for the running
of the church and or denomination often resting on the shoulders of
one person. There is a large differentiation between those
who are in leadership and those who are not and the ultimate leader
in the church is a fulltime pastor. But the pastor is one
gift among five that was given to teach the body of Christ and help
it reach maturity. And if we consider the organic nature of
the body of Christ and the example given to us in scripture the
current hierarchical nature of the church does not fit well with
the church as a living breathing organic organisation that is the
body of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians Paul addresses a problem that the church is
having with divisions in the Church and different people dividing
themselves into groups based on who they are following. In
considering this passage in 1 Corinthians I asked myself this
question. How is this different to the current structure of
the church? If we consider that the church is currently
divided into different denominations based on the doctrines that we
follow and within denominations the different churches are often
defined by the senior pastor who leads them and people will church
shop based on whether they like the church or not. Then the
unfortunate answer that I came up with is that it is not much
different, even though the things we follow may not be physical
people we still let these things divide us.