Headship vs. Lordship

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian - Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

The Bible draws a careful distinction between Christ’s headship and His Lordship. Throughout the New Testament, the headship of Christ virtually always has in view the Lord’s relationship with His body (Eph. 1:22–23; 4:15; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19). The lordship of Christ virtually always has in view His relationship with His individual disciples (Matt. 7:21–22; 10:24–25; Luke 6:46).

What lordship is to the individual, headship is to the church. Headship and lordship are two dimensions of the same thing. Headship islordship worked out in the corporate lives of God’s people.

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian - Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

The Bible draws a careful distinction between Christ’s headship and His Lordship. Throughout the New Testament, the headship of Christ virtually always has in view the Lord’s relationship with His body (Eph. 1:22–23; 4:15; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19). The lordship of Christ virtually always has in view His relationship with His individual disciples (Matt. 7:21–22; 10:24–25; Luke 6:46).

What lordship is to the individual, headship is to the church. Headship and lordship are two dimensions of the same thing. Headship islordship worked out in the corporate lives of God’s people.

This distinction is important to grasp because it throws light on the problem of church practice today. It’s all too common for Christians to know Christ’s lordship and yet know nothing of His headship. A believer may submit to the lordship of Jesus in his or her own personal life. He may obey what he understands in the Bible. He may pray fervently. He may live self-sacrificially. Yet at the same time, he may know nothing about shared ministry, mutual submission, authentic community, or corporate testimony.

In the final analysis, to be subject to the headship of Jesus means to respond to His will concerning the life and practice of the church. It means submitting ourselves to the way that God designed the church to Submission to the headship of Christ incarnates the New Testament reality that Jesus is not only Lord of the individual believer, He is also the functioning Head of His church.

My friend and mentor Stephen Kaung put it best when he said,
People believe that the Word of God shows them how to live individually before God, but they think that insofar as their corporate life is concerned, God says, “It’s up to you; do whatever you like.” And that’s what we find today in Christianity; there is no guiding principle as to our corporate life—everyone does what is right in his own eyes. But, dear brothers and sisters, we are saved individually, but we are called corporately. There is as much teaching and example in the Word of God that governs our corporate life as there is our personal life.

For these reasons, I believe that modern evangelicalism has held the doctrine of the believing priesthood only intellectually.But it has failed to apply it practically due to the subtle entrapment of deeply entrenched traditions.

What Does It Look Like Today?

Over the past twenty years, I’ve been privileged to attend hundreds of openparticipatory church meetings. Some of them were drop-dead glorious. Those meetings have been burned into the circuitry of my brain. Others were decent. Others were horrible. Still others were unmentionable!

While institutional “church services” are essentially flawless, organic church meetings will vary depending on the spiritual condition and preparation of each member.

Herein lies one of the tasks of an apostolic worker. It’s to equip God’s people to function together in a free-yet-orderly meeting that expresses Christ in His fullness.

In all the years that I’ve been gathering in and planting organic churches, I’ve discovered that there’s no way to explain accurately what a meeting under the headship of Christ looks like to those who have never seen one. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to paint a picture of one meeting that will give you the flavor of what a glorious meeting can look like.

About a decade ago, a church made up of about twenty-five Christians gathered together in a home one evening. I had just spent a year and a half ministering Jesus Christ to this group in biweekly “apostolic meetings.” The goal of that ministry was to equip this new church where it could function on its own—without any human headship.

The day arrived. The church was to have its first meeting on its own. I wasn’t to be present. However, I snuck into the room without anyone noticing and hid behind a couch. (I felt that if I were visible in that meeting, it would have affected the way the believers functioned. This is usually the case when the person who plants the church is present during its gatherings—especially in the early years of a church’s life.)

The believers gathered together and began the meeting with singing. The singing was a capella. A Christian sister began the meeting by starting a song. And everyone sang with her. Then prayers were offered spontaneously one by one. Then a brother in Christ started another song. By this time, everyone was standing together. More prayers were offered. More songs were sung. During the singing, different ones would share short exhortations based upon the lyrics of the songs. The word moving doesn’t quite say it. There was no song leader present. All were participating in After they sang for a time, everyone sat down.

And immediately a sister stood up and began sharing. She spoke about how she had found Christ as her living water during the week. She read a few verses out of John 4. As she began to share from the text, two other sisters interrupted her and shared insights out of their own experience from the same passage and the same theme. Yet what they shared of Christ was different.

When the first sister was finished, a brother stood up and began to speak. He also talked about the Lord as living water, but he spoke from a passage in Revelation 22. He spoke for several minutes, and then a sister stood up and began adding to what he had shared. This went on for over an hour. One by one, without pauses, brothers and sisters in Christ stood up and shared out of their spiritual experience of the Lord Jesus Christ. They all revealed Him as living water.

Some shared poems, others shared songs, others shared stories, others shared from Scripture, others offered prayers.

As I heard all of this from behind the couch, I couldn’t resist the tears. I was so touched I began to weep. That meeting was electric. It was as if a flowing river had poured into that room and it couldn’t be stopped. I could sense the Lord’s presence and grace. The sharing was rich, full, living, and vibrant. I wished I had a pen and pad to write down the glorious things that were being said. Many of them bristled with seminal insight. But I just listened in amazement.

The incredible thing was that no one was leading this gathering. No one was facilitating, either. (No human being, that is.) And it was incredibly Christ-centered.

The meeting finally wound down and someone stood up and began a song. The rest of the church stood up and joined in. As they sang, I slipped out of the room. Only a few people noticed me. When I met with the church the following week, I divulged to them that I had been present. The church had prepared for this gathering. They had broken up into pairs and pursued the Lord together during the week in preparation for the meeting. The result was a corporate explosion of spiritual life that displayed the Lord Jesus Christ through His every-membered body.

Please understand that this group of Christians couldn’t have had a meeting like this when I first began working with them. At that time, most of them were habituated to be passive and quiet. Some, who had stronger personalities, would dominate the sharing. But after a year and a half of receiving practical and spiritual ministry, they were equipped to know the Lord together, function in a coordinated way, open their mouths, and share the living Christ in an orderly fashion. And God was magnified as a result.

I could multiply examples of this kind of meeting and the wide variety expressed within them. I trust, however, that you now have an impression of how a meeting of the church can be under the Lord’s living headship in our day.

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