Discipleship, Leadership and Church Planting

The New Testament doctrine of ministry rests therefore not on the clergy-laity distinction but on the twin and complementary pillars of the priesthood of all believers and the gifts of the Spirit. Today, four centuries after the Reformation, the full implications of this Protestant affirmation have yet to be worked out. The clergy-laity dichotomy is a direct carry-over from pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism and a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the Kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only “holy men,” namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry. In the New Testament there are functional distinctions between various kinds of ministries but no hierarchical division between clergy and laity. —Howard Snyder

When we go back to the Word of God and read it afresh, we see that the clergy profession is the result of our human culture and history and not of God’s will for the church. It is simply impossible to construct a defensible biblical justification for the institution of clergy as we know it. —Christian Smith

In late September, we held our annual Simple Church Conference in Kiev. It was a wonderful time and we were blessed to have Wayne Jacobsen teach us and lead our discussions. Wayne is the author of He Loves Me and So You Don’t Want To Go to Church Anymore. 

The discussions we had about our relationship with God and with one another deeply touched our lives.

"I have a question I've been wanting to ask you for four years," I said to Charles Brock, author of Practicing Principles of Indigenous Church Planting, when I met in the Philippines a few years ago. "You go into the poor areas of Manila, you plant churches rapidly, they always produce their own leadership, they are never dependent on outside funds and they always reproduce.

"I know two other brothers who plant churches in the same areas and it takes them six or seven years. They are always dependent, they never reproduce and they never can produce their own leadership. They say poverty has destroyed the psyche of the people and they are not leadership quality.

Our fascination with celebrities often becomes personality cult.  One of the things which I simply do not understand about  American politics is the messianic fervor which seems to flow through the presidential process.  Can one person really solve the problems of a nation?  That leadership cult also flows through the church.  So much teaching on leadership seems to have as its goal the creation of dependency!  We have our own versions of the celebrity, personality, leadership cults!

In John 16:7,  Jesus is telling the disciples that  "It is to your advantage that I go away".  After three years with Jesus, after all the miracles and after all the dreams of the Kingdom it comes to this?  How could it possibly be better without Jesus?  How could it possibly be better without the moment by moment flesh and blood presence of Jesus?

I was born in Ukraine in Mariupol city in 1975, in period of the Soviet Union. I had very various intereststs in my childhood. A couple of years I was interested in Biology, I even reared different animals at home. But in the age of 12 I took a great interest in Physics. I was very interested in the world structure and it's origin. I took part in different physics contests pretty successful. I was also interested in math. In the age of 14 I wrote a small research about the solution of differential equations. In general I was interested in everything that was logical, everything that slightly opened a curtain of mystery over how everything was organized. I almost didn't attend school in my last years, I had an individual schedule. I entered university on a physical faculty without any exams. I was interested in programming since my childhood. During my last years of school I was usually sitting at my mom's work and programed. At that time the most cool processor was 8086. When I was on my first year of University I wrote a valid debugger on Assembler. That was my first really big program.

The created world has natural boundaries held in place by gravity. The oceans are held in place by the shores. The atmosphere is contained by the weight of earth's gravity. Gravity keeps the solar system contained in orbit around the sun. In a similar way people have natural boundaries in the way that we function best. We are pulled into social groupings of certain sizes by a spiritual gravity inherent with the function of the group.

Our fascination with celebrities often becomes personality cult.  One of the things which I simply do not understand about  American politics is the messianic fervor which seems to flow through the presidential process.  Can one person really solve the problems of a nation?  That leadership cult also flows through the church.  So much teaching on leadership seems to have as its goal the creation of dependency!  We have our own versions of the celebrity, personality, leadership cults!

In John 16:7,  Jesus is telling the disciples that  "It is to your advantage that I go away".  After three years with Jesus, after all the miracles and after all the dreams of the Kingdom it comes to this?  How could it possibly be better without Jesus?  How could it possibly be better without the moment by moment flesh and blood presence of Jesus?

Hello Friends

We keep having this conversation about the several responsibilities that one must accept if any church is to work. Folks join up with a simple community and then discover that the freedom brings responsibility!  It would seem as though some actually prefer freedom from responsibility to the responsibilities of freedom!  Sitting in the stands watching the game carries no inherent risk but actually playing the game carries the risk of failure as one of the prices of the possibility of victory.

Recently there has been a lot of dialogue on the role of leadership. What is this thing called leadership? Who leads? Who follows? What difference does it make? Who cares? The question of leadership always leads into a lively debate. The great urgency always comes down to-who the heck is in charge around here?

My intention here is to share some of my thoughts on the role of leadership.

I was asked to write an answer to this question because of some thoughts I’ve developed over the years but have never written down. Quite frankly, I am hesitant to write them down now. I am confident that my words will hit a sore spot in the church today. I am writing nonetheless, and, actually, for that very reason. Not to ignite division, but to challenge us to see something about ourselves that may not be healthy. This is a very critical question for the church to ask today. In order to approach this subject with cooler heads and calmer hearts, may I suggest we commit ourselves to addressing this from the New Testament rather than from our traditions, practical challenges and emotional bias. Can we read the New Testament as if we never read it before?