What model of church do you follow
in your church? There are two basic types which I can think of: there’s the ‘church
as bus’ model and then there’s the ‘church as body’. Now we know which the New
Testament model is – it is ‘church as body’. Paul in his first letter to
Corinthians makes this very clear and gives a lengthy teaching on it. We would
all probably claim that this is also the model we practice in ‘our’ church. But
what is the reality?
I fear that ‘church as bus’ is far
more prevalent. And what I mean by that is surely obvious – it is the leader(s)
as bus driver and then the rest as passengers. Even in newer churches –
that would pride themselves on exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit – the
old split between clergy and laity is still present. A simple way of knowing
that this is the case is by looking at the architecture of the Sunday morning
meeting set-up: if you have rows of chairs or even a semi-circle facing the
front with the worship leader/band and podium for preacher at the front, then
you too have the clergy-laity divide in your congregation.
But we make room for the body to
exercise their gifts, you loudly protest. And indeed that’s what we do: we make
room for the gifts. You see that’s the problem – we’re not supposed to make
room for them; they are meant to be the content of the meeting. Instead
of that the worship leader leads a song and then has a gap for gifts; leads
another song and maybe has another gap. Or room is made for the body after the
worship time and before the sermon. But it is still a clergy led meeting with
some room for the laity.
This has been in my thinking
recently as my fellow leaders and I have been encouraging our own church to
step off the bus. And then yesterday this thought hit between the eyes: if the
passengers are meant to leave the bus then so are the drivers! We too
need to shift in our own thinking as leaders and not just ‘make room’ for the
body to work but to become a part of the body ourselves.
How is leadership supposed to work
in a ‘church as body’ model? Not sure yet. Maybe you’d like to offer your own
thoughts?
