Ezekiel 34:11-16
For thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land. I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God. “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.
Our passage is lifted from a chapter whose crosshairs are trained on the shepherds of Israel. These people (who are likely royalty and public officials) will face judgement because they have selfishly consumed resources that should have been shared with the flock at large. I could easily take this in the direction of politics but I am not looking for my salvation from that arena. Instead I will focus on shepherds who have been entrusted with eternal responsibility – the souls of men.
If you have read much in middlewithmystery you know that I have struggled within organized Christianity. My challenge has been to reconcile what I have read in the New Testament and experienced in my walk with Christ, with the practices and outcomes of our current traditions.
As I am pondering how to say what’s on my heart, Jerry Fletcher (played by Mel Gibson) comes to mind. He is the paranoid taxi driver in the movie, Conspiracy Theory who is convinced that everything is manipulated by corrupt and covert government operations. He is crazy but not completely as the plot ultimately reveals. His Conspiracy Theory news letter has 6 prescribers, about the same as middlewithmystery. (Hopefully you can distinguish between paranoia and my use of sarcasm.) Note; I’m not hammering my keypad and grinding my teeth anymore. I’m simply standing in the middle of a great divide within Christianity and trying to relationally hold on to those I love on either side of the chasm.
One of the challenges I have had within the church is pastors. In talking about this group, I risk having the crosshairs moved toward my head. (Did I mention that all the subscribers to the Conspiracy Theory Newsletter had been assassinated?) Pastors wield the bulk of religious authority within Christendom. Where in the Bible did that come from?! In fact the word pastor is not used even one time in the New Testament! The plural form is used just once.
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-12
Yet (with the exception of missionaries) pastors are the undisputed head of all things Christian. These well meaning men and women oversee the construction and maintenance of buildings and the programs that are typically funded by the tithe. Want to know how many times the tithe is mentioned in the New Testament? At most the tithe was mentioned four times. And each of those were a reference to those under the Old Covenant. The NT truth is that the OT Law became obsolete when the priesthood changed from the Levites to Jesus Christ. The package of laws that commanded tithes to be given to the Levites is obsolete.
To think of yourself as an orthodox Christian, it will be much easier for you to simply set the authority and inspiration of the New Testament aside and continue following the unchallenged, hybrid OT/NT theology that is now sacrosanct. This might not be insane if our traditions were producing the same results as were experienced by first century Christians. Whatever they were doing then turned the world upside down within a few hundred years. In light of our results it would make sense to give consideration to what it was they were doing and reforming our practices around what we discover. Currently this would be the equivalent of handing Pastor the tool and asking him to saw off the limb on which he and his staff are perched. This would be a miracle and it is one I pray that I will see.
The truth is I love pastors. They are almost always generous hearted people who have been called to shepherd the souls of God’s lambs. The sad thing is that, as they accept the traditional yoke their institution has prepared for them, they look a lot more like CEO’s than those tasked to care for souls. Many pastors are gifted expositors and regularly speak to their members. This is how they believe they are feeding and caring for their flock. If the bible truths conveyed in these messages could in fact nourish and grow sheep, given the number of sermons preached, there would not be any shortage of laborers for the harvest which we are told is ripe.
Since the early church did not have tithes how could they create a budget? Without a budget how could they finance a building? Without either real estate of money how could they hire a professionally trained clergyman and their staff? How could they oversee programs, choirs and pageants? These questions seem absurd or baffling only if we insist in measuring ourselves by ourselves and our traditions. If we measure ourselves against NT values and practices which yielded such dramatic results two millennium ago perhaps we would start asking the right questions. Then perhaps from the answers we get, we can fashion a new vision of Christianity – a new vision of the kingdom of God. We may grow some big 501(c)(3)’s but until we measure ourselves from a biblical plumb line it is not likely we will ever experience NT, kingdom-quality outcomes. But…let’s not give up, let’s dream together in light of scripture.
As I look at the New Testament Church I see is a highly decentralized organization that looks more like Al Qaida than our traditional models. Listen to one academics understanding of al Qaeda….
The al Qaeda network is adaptive, complex, and resilient. Today, it has a formal organizational structure, with the core group at its head providing overall direction. Informal relationships and human networks create an underlying latticed structure that bridges the formal structure of the network. The decentralization of the al Qaeda network has not made it weaker. On the contrary, affiliate-to-affiliate relationships may have increased the overall network’s resiliency. These relationships may also ensure al Qaeda’s survival even if the core group is defeated completely.
Someone is no doubt thinking (….perhaps I am a little paranoid), “How dare you even remotely try and compare the Church of Jesus Christ to al Quada!!” Bear with me please. As the al Queda cells independently wage a hate-driven jihad against non-believers, just imagine communities (or cells) comprised of informal relationships of saints who are independently waging a love-driven war against darkness by taking ownership of the relational and geographic space God has entrusted them with – not just by referring needs to the right pastor or committee head, but by activating our own networks of giving. This can be a doable first step in breaking stride with the paradigm of church attendance and dependency and moving toward simply being the Church. Ultimately people cast their vote with their time and their dollars.
Instead of the annihilation of unbelievers, the members of these transformational-missional communities are intentionally loving those who do not believe like them. Instead of the salt all being dumped out weekly by a few people (pastors mostly), in a few place (local churches mostly) why not re-envision the church (which includes every believer) as the salt that is to be distributed more broadly into the world via our existing informal networks? These networks are already in place. In other words, the army has been strategically placed! All we need is to be broken of the idea that attending church and tithing is the fulfillment of our religious obligation – a notion that was unavailable to the first century Christians. Wouldn’t this likely get us closer to what Paul was trying to say to the Ephesians?
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-12
And just as al Quada lives on (and even thrives) after its core leaders are taken out, so to will the Church whose resiliency is guaranteed by the affiliate-to-affiliate relationships native to the Body of Christ. The human networks will create an underlying latticed structure that will bridge the formal structure of the network. When Paul and that generation of leaders passed away they had achieved this by way of practicing 2 Timothy 2:2. Note; The underlying, informal, relational-lattice structure will be essential when our value system becomes illegal, our gatherings are outlawed and our tax deductions are disallowed. If you think this is paranoid thinking or an impossible outcome, please reread church history and the daily headlines.
The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
I see the leaders (call them what you want) of the Church that Jesus sacrificed himself for being those men and women who can somehow faithfully serve as catalysts to these love-driven, informal and interactive cells and groups of cells (aka; communities). They will be those who can provide a biblical kingdom-value system that lives eternally and independent of man but can also be internalized by him. That can and will happen only when the living Word which is Jesus Christ is discovered as our life, our theology and our first love.
This Church will not decline in membership. It will never have a shortage of resources. It will never be constrained by physical space. Like al Quada it will inspire its members to lay their lives down for their cause. For the saints this cause will be infinitely more than organized Christianity. It will be Jesus Christ Himself, the Word of God, the One who first loved us and laid his life down for us. Exploring further…..
There is a documented exodus of mature believers from traditional churches. One of the reasons this is occurring is that there is an impasse between pastors and maturing members. Only those leaders in denial are unaware of this. Why is this? Could it be in part that those leaving, intuitively understand something that the pastor and staff simply cannot (or will not) see? Perhaps the remaining leadership intuitively know that they have much vested in the traditions (which includes the writing of their paychecks out the tithe-based income).
I pray God will gather his true shepherds together to prayerfully consider the future of the Kingdom and the Church which is integral to its fulfillment. Surely the Lord would be pleased with informal gatherings centered around pioneering a kingdom church. Whether our passage has anything to do with pastors today, I do not know. I suspect it might…. but I also may have just abused it as a convenient segue to something that is on my heart. If that is the case, I am answerable to the Lord. At the same time, the Church is surely ready for God….
to search for His scattered sheep and seek them out and deliver them from all the places to which they have been scattered; to bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and feed them in a good pasture. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pastures. He will feed His flock and lead them to rest.” He will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick.
To get a new (and I believe clearer biblical) view of the pastor and the local church read The Pastor Has No Clothes by John Zens. If your traditions are working just fine, don’t even go near this book (unless you are just adding it to your shelf of contemporary heretical writings – aka; the things you disagree with)
For the record, the only conspiracy I subscribe to is the try-lateral conspiracy between the world the flesh and the devil. His Word and His Spirit affirm in me that this conspiracy is no mere theory. And…. I too may be a little crazy just not completely. We shall just have to see how His- story ultimately unfolds.
Father, we are your Church and the Bride you are endeavoring to make ready. While we are cleansed from our sins, we are still being refined in our vision and our character. Succeed wildly Lord in this hour with this transformation whereby both You and Your Bride will be highly honored in all places at all times.