The Biblical Basis of Congregationalism

This post is part of a series on congregational church polity. It is the second installment. The first is here.

Speaking of congregationalism, pastor Shannon O'Dell was quoted this week in Baptist Press (see here) as saying, "If there is one thing I could say to the rural church it is: The reason they don’t grow is that they are structured un-biblically." Of course, O'Dell apparently equates congregationalism with its worst manifestation, "Families in power want all the power in the small local rural church with no responsibility—you’re so trapped you can’t move forward." O'Dell instead favors a system of church governance in which he is in charge. He makes his contrast pretty plainly: "Most churches are structured for it to be congregationally led or democratic. God’s order states: #1 God; #2 the pastor; then the elders, deacons and trustees."

Is it true? Is there no biblical basis for congregationalism? Did our spiritual forefathers just make it all up? I don't think so. There is a biblical case for congregationalism, and I find it compelling.

I must say first, there is no biblical basis for the "Families in power want all the power..." kind of system. But judging congregationalism based upon its worst exemplar is unfair. The equivalent would be for me to judge O'Dell's system by examining the history of the papacy. Maybe that's not the most helpful way to pursue the dialogue.

Even if I have no desire to defend the abuses of congregationalism, I submit that the Bible assigns certain governance duties not to the pastor or the deacons (did I miss the part about "trustees" in the Bible?), but directly to the gathered congregation. In an effort to present a comprehensive study, I admit that I am presenting points of varying weights. Some of these points are pretty much unavoidable. Others have more wiggle room for interpretation. Taken as a whole, I believe that they make a strong biblical case for congregationalism.

The very meaning of the word church

The word ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) was, prior to Jesus' appropriation of it at Cæsarea Philippi (Matthew 16:18), a political term. Ἐκκλησία conjured up for Hellenics the same thoughts that come to American minds at the mention of the phrase "town hall meeting."

The meaning of any word is a complex phenomenon, defined only by the idiosyncracies of the people who employ it. I am not saying that, because the Greeks used this word in such-and-such fashion, it necessarily defines a church as a local voting assembly. But there is no internal evidence favoring any other understanding of the word over this one. Since Jesus forewent terms like synagogue and deliberately borrowed this Greek political term, and since there is no evidence that any other meaning for the term is dominant, I find it reasonable to believe that the idea of a democratically voting local assembly of people constitutes at least some part of what Jesus meant when He chose to refer to the institution that He founded as an ἐκκλησία.

Matthew 18:15-20

¹⁵ If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. ¹⁶ But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. ¹⁷ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. ¹⁸ Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

¹⁹ Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.

(Matthew 18:15-20, NASB)

Church discipline is a function specifically reserved to the congregation by the very words of Jesus. The first individual mentioned in the passage has the right to bring an accusation. The two or three people of stage two have the right to serve as corroborating witnesses. But only the church has the authority to exclude. No matter the size of that congregation, even if it consists only of two or three people, Christ has promised that the authority of heaven lies behind congregational decisions about such matters.

I know that Jesus' statement opens a can of worms embodied in a thousand what-ifs. The impasse between J. R. Graves and R. B. C. Howell from 150 years ago gives us a situation to which it is difficult to apply Matthew 18:15-20. Certainly there is plenty of devil in some of the details. However, the point is that Jesus did not say "tell it to the elder" or "tell it to the apostle." Rather, He commanded to bring matters of church discipline to the assembly (ἐκκλησία, "church").

Thus, I believe that the New Testament requries that congregations regulate their own membership.

The Corinthian Scandal

What Jesus described in principle, Paul applied to a specific situation in the local church in Corinth:

³ For I, on my part, though absent in body yet present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. ⁴ In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, ⁵ I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus…

¹² …Do you not judge those who are within the church? ¹³ But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. (1 Corinthians 5:3-5, 12b-13, NASB)

What makes this passage especially interesting to me is Paul's self-restraint when he deals with a subject that falls within the Christ-assigned jurisdiction of the congregation. Paul wants this guy kicked out, and not six months down the road, either. But Paul won't (can't?) just exclude this egregious sinner. Rather, he tells the church that they must do it "when [they] are assembled." The congregation has to meet. At the beginning of verse 5, the NASB makes the rather unfortunate insertion of the words "I have decided." These words do not appear in the Greek text. I think it makes more sense to take the infinitive translated by "to deliver" as giving the purpose of the meeting. Paul insists that the congregation assemble and handle this matter of church discipline as a congregation.

By the way, they did so by holding business meeting. I don't mean that they read minutes. I don't mean that the Corinthian church had a dusty copy of Robert's Rules of Order sitting nearby. But we do know that they voted, and we do know that a majority vote carried the day. How do we know? Because the remainder of the story appears in 2 Corinthians:

⁶ Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority. (2 Corinthians 2:6, NASB)

Thus, it seems clear to me that, in the New Testament church, the congregation and only the congregation—according to the specification of Christ Himself—had the authority to regulate the membership of the church, which it did by holding votes and following majority rule.

Of course, I direct you back to the first post in the series. Such a system is only biblical so long as the goal of the majority is to submit to the rule of the only One who is Head of the church.

I'm sleepy. More later. In our next installment, we'll look at the congregation's role in the selection of its leadership.

Lies and Baptist Statistics

Here's one effect of our utter lack of meaningful church membership: The vast majority of Baptist statistics are so tainted as to hardly be useful.

Consider, for example, the beaten-to-death assertion that American Christians divorce at a higher rate than American lost people. Oh, really? But who are these "American Christians"? Are we talking about the people who actually have some involvement in the life of the church, or are we talking about those millions of people whose names are on church rolls but who give absolutely no visible evidence of being saved? I've only been in ministry twenty years, but my experience so far is that divorce among actual faithful attenders occurs far below the 50% mark, and still rocks and scandalizes the church.

One might argue that people with commitment issues—a group very likely to divorce—are likely to be highly overrepresented in the group of people who dally with a temporary church affiliation and then disappear. Yet this is hardly an indictment of marital fidelity among real Christians.

This oft-cited statistic soldiers on as a case study in the irrelevance and ineptitude of the gospel (or at least of the church, depending upon who is wielding it). The sad thing is that we do it to ourselves. Every person we leave on the rolls of the church who is completely out of touch with the ministry of the church—every one of them—is a false and damaging advertisement for the idea that Christianity is just another ineffective religion.

Clinton & Carter

I have received requests from readers who want to know my opinion about the Clinton-Carter soiree that took place while I was tending to Grandpa Brady in Missouri (BTW, if you missed that story in the comment log on the previous post, it is worth reading). Knowing that I would be in complete disagreement with the direction that these former presidents would wish to take Baptist life, folks hunger to hear me hurl a little invective, I guess.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but personal reasons leave me with absolutely no desire to heap gratuitous public criticism upon President Clinton.

I will say this: Baptists are in desperate need of reform. The most obvious flaw of Bro. Duren's recent post about "Tories" and "Reformers" is that many of the people he would classify into the first category are very zealous for a real Baptist reformation. Certainly I know that I am.

Yet of all of the ways in which Baptists need change and reformation, I am prepared to say that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have absolutely nothing that we lack and need, as far as I can tell. That's not to deny that they have any good qualities—I'm merely saying that, whatever good points I see in them, the SBC abounds in those areas as well as in others.

Now, if you want me to be harsh and unkind, you could always ask me about her rather than him. Then I'll really be tempted! :-)

There Is...One Lord

The central grounding truth of biblical church governance is the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ alone is the one Lord and Head of the church.

Papal rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Episcopal rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Synodical rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Elder rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Deacon rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Pastoral rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Congregational rule is wrong and unbiblical.

Christ founded the church (Matthew 16:18). Christ is the Head of the church (Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18). He and He alone is the Great Shepherd (Hebrews 13:20...i.e. "Senior Pastor") of the church. He has not abdicated or retired. Jesus is not an emeritus anything.

So, biblical church governance is about one and only one thing: What does Jesus want?

Facing the bewildering array of decisions that churches face today, our purpose for our polity is to determine the will of God. I believe that every form of polity is vulnerable to corruption by those who will not acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, yet I do not believe that every form of polity is equally vulnerable to that danger. Some forms of polity are better suited to discerning and following God's will than are others.

If the New Testament gives us any instruction about church polity (and I believe that it does), then it would be strange indeed to conclude that ignoring those instructions will improve our ability to find God's will for the church. Do we find God's will by ignoring God's word? I think not.

So, this upcoming series on church polity rests upon these premises: The purpose of polity is to acknowledge and follow the Lordship of Christ; Christ has given us instruction about church polity; and even in the choice of a system of church polity, we acknowledge that the choice is Christ's, and not our own, to make.

An Update from Drs. Yarnell and Caner

While I've been trying to convince ACS to close out the 2006 books for FBC Farmersville, the blogging vortex has apparently encircled Dr. Malcolm Yarnell and Dr. Emir Caner. Welcome to Oz, gentlemen. In conversation with them, I learn that they have no desire to drop houses on anyone's heads (deserved or undeserved). I was, however, able to obtain a joint statement from them:

In 2006, Drs. Emir Caner and Malcolm Yarnell agreed to address the issue of tongues in two papers which are now White Papers at www.BaptistTheology.org. These papers have garnered extensive analysis, for which we are both appreciative. However, some critics have perceived our papers as a defense of Cessationism, a topic rarely covered in either paper. The papers were intended to deal with Private Prayer Language (PPL) and whether it is defined as a spiritual gift in Scripture. Our conclusion from the Bible was and is that PPL is not biblical. Additionally, as can be seen within history, PPL is a recent development inherently connected with the Charismatic movement and thus is not found in Southern Baptist history until recently.

The papers assert that the biblical texts that the proponents of PPL had brought forward to support such a practice, a practice which in our opinion may really just be a religiously-neutral phenomenon, provide no indication that PPL was ever acknowledged in the Bible as a spiritual gift. In other words, we vehemently disagreed with the claim that PPL is a legitimate spiritual gift according to the definition of Scripture. By accusing us of advocating Cessationism (or the novel doctrine of semi-Cessationism), controversialists are not addressing what we perceive to be the primary issue. Furthermore, we are being represented as advocating a position which we have not defined. We do note that if the practice of tongues is to be biblical, it must be practiced corporately, in order, and with a known language. The term Cessationist has been used quite imprecisely and illogically with regard to our position given that we do not believe PPL has ceased since we do not believe it ever authentically existed. Indeed, the idea of unintelligible and private speech contradicts Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 14 for the church to be edified and the lost evangelized through the intelligible and public proclamation of the Gospel.

Finally, constantly stirring a controversy over a non-biblical practice seems to us to violate Scripture’s commands to seek unity among the brethren. Ultimately, we have defended the integrity of Scripture and the traditional position of Southern Baptists in our White Papers and we stand by them. We really would prefer not to be part of a continuing controversy over this issue; however, recent accusations that we are Cessationists seem to us to be another way that confusion and division might be introduced into the Southern Baptist Convention. This is something we do not desire. Instead, our prayer is that Southern Baptists will stand firm on the Word of God and adhere to the Great Commission by proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world for whom Christ died. May the peace of God reign over you. Truth is Immortal.

These learned men frame an important corrective note, I believe. The real issue facing the SBC today is not when or whether the biblical gift of tongues ceased or resumed or whatnot—the real issue regards what the gift of tongues essentially was (and is). Is the phenomenon that began its modern advent with Charles Fox Parham and continues with tongues-speakers and private-language-prayers today the same phenomenon as the biblical miracle of speaking in tongues? I've heard descriptions of "cessationism" from those who do not hold it, but I'm having trouble finding many people active in Southern Baptist life who actually hold such views (e.g., that the New Testament stipulates a post-apostolic cessation of miraculous gifts). I do, however, find well-populated ranks of Southern Baptists who, without daring to assert that God could not give the gift of tongues today, are more than willing to evaluate the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave practice as being a modern innovation completely unconnected with the New Testament.

How Appropriate!

Today I turn thirty-seven (a.k.a. practically forty).

I have a Page-a-Day desk calendar at work that gives me a new vocabulary word every day, complete with a definition and a little story on the back detailing either the origin of the word or some bit of related linguistic trivia.

What word did they choose for my thirty-seventh birthday?

Methuselah.

Tomorrow I think I'll go shopping for nursing homes.

A Timely Case for Congregationalism

I promised not to post any more this year, but circumstances have afforded me something to say, and Sarah has awakened early this morning and afforded me time to say it.

I proceed somewhat without sufficient foundation, because I have not yet blogged extensively about my belief that congregational church governance is biblical polity. More on that at a later date. For now, I hope you will let it suffice for me to state without support a few conclusions I have drawn about New Testament polity:

1. Christ is the one-and-only Head of the church.
2. Four sources of authority are commended to us by Christ (although not equally commended)
   • Scriptural authority (consisting at the time of Christ of the Old Testament).
   • Apostolic authority (now enshrined in the New Testament scriptures).
   • Pastoral authority (more properly, presbyterian authority)
   • Congregational authority.
Only congregationalism is capable of making room for all of those sources of authority.
3. Not all congregationalism is the same—there are varieties of congregationalism that enshrine congregational authority without acknowledging the others—but the best and most biblical system falls within the broad boundaries of congregationalism.

Someday we'll have a good, in-depth conversation about these conclusions.

For the meantime, I wish to pose a brief discussion about the decline of congregationalism. Dr. Stan Norman, erstwhile professor of Baptist theology at NOBTS, has highlighted reasons that Baptists(?) are abandoning congregational church governance. I selectively restate them in my own words:

1. They do not believe that congregational church governance is biblical.
2. They do not believe that congregational church governance is efficient.
3. They have witnessed the abuses of congregational church governance (i.e. ugly business meetings).

As I have stated above, some day Praisegod Barebones needs to host a discussion about whether congregational church governance is biblical. The reopening of this conversation is a sincere one, and I acknowledge that many of my readers will probably harbor questions as to whether congregationalism is biblical or merely cultural. Many will never have read or heard a strong case for the biblical foundation of congregationalism. When we have that conversation, I think it will be worth our while.

But I believe that other factors are at play here. The question of efficiency looms large over this discussion, especially as Baptists lust after the megachurch. Congregationalism becomes more difficult (in some ways) the larger the congregation. Norman posed the idea of congregationalism as discipleship, suggesting that efficiency is not the only (not even the most important!) measure of a concept's utility to the Kingdom. Who hasn't entertained the thought as a pastor that things would be much easier if we didn't have to mess with the trouble of a business meeting?

The question of abuse is another large issue. If you've been Baptist for very long, you've probably at least heard stories about horrible, meanspirited, congregation-splitting, Holy-Spirit-grieving business meetings. But I ask you, is this a problem of the format or of the participants?

Dealing with Congregational Conflict

The participants in our congregation are sinners. The leaders of our congregations are sinners. We are sinners—all of us individually. Because all of these statements are true, we are going to have conflict in our congregations. It seems to me that some short-sighted individuals have reached the erroneous conclusion that scrapping business meetings will do away with congregational conflict altogether or at least push it into the background and out of the public view.

But perhaps it is accomplishing the opposite. I have no way to know where the truth lies in the current woes at Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, TN (for more information on this situation, see Baptist Press here). As a fellow pastor I feel sympathy for Dr. Gaines's plight, but I know that he and I apparently hold widely divergent views of church and pastoral leadership. I refuse to draw a firm conclusion from all the way out here in TX. But I do know that a business meeting—even the worst, most contentious business meeting—is no uglier and no more public than this, or this, or other such sites that are springing up.

Are such websites coming soon to a church near you? To your church?

Christians are going to differ. Churches are going to face conflict. Neither you nor any guru that you might find will ever deliver up the magic potion to eliminate the ordeal of church conflict. The question is not whether your church will face conflict; the question is how your church will deal with conflict among its members.

Assuming that the Bible allows for such, wouldn't it be more productive and a better witness to allow believers to gather in…I don't know…some sort of meeting at which members had a forum to express their views and the church had an opportunity to resolve conflicts? Perhaps autocracy or oligarchy pose their own dangers for abuse—dangers as bad or worse than the inherent weaknesses of decision-making by a congregation of redeemed sinners.