Starting Churches

[mike]

I've been part of and known churches who didn't really have men who met the scriptural qualifications for deacons and elders. But they believed in having ordinations. "Were big boys and big boys have ordinations." So they go ahead and have ordinations, but the churches struggle and struggle. This kinds of churches happen whenever people get the idea that "we are all priests unto God and we all have the Spirit" so anyone can start churches. You won't find this ideology in churches that are careful about sound doctrine, who vet people for influential positions, and who believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church.

With your experience in church planting, I'm quite interested in what you say here, and I have a lot of questions.

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?
2. Is it problematic to apply Jesus' words "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" to church planting?
3. Can just anyone start a church; if not, why not?
4. What makes a church legitimate?
5. Can a church care about sound doctrine, and believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church still not have anyone who meets the scriptural qualifications for church leadership?

I seem to remember comments from our ministry around recent ordinations that we should not think there is no one qualified in our church, and that numerous persons are. I'm not sure if that came from a fear that teaching the biblical qualifications would create an ideal so high in our minds that we didn't really think anybody fit the bill. But I thought it was interesting regardless.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?

I seem to remember comments from our ministry around recent ordinations that we should not think there is no one qualified in our church, and that numerous persons are.

I can think of two reasons:

1) One of the qualifications for leaders is the faithfulness of their children. Depending on how strictly this is interpreted, it may rule out many brothers who would otherwise be qualified.

2) I believe a lot of churches add on extra-biblical qualifications for leadership in the church. In much of American Evangelicalism, a pastor without a seminary degree is seen as a suspicious decision by many. "Spiritual maturity" is sometimes held to a very high bar in Anabaptist circles. And every church has possibly had difficult experiences with leaders, and found the problem, and decided that avoid the problematic characteristics is another qualification for leaders they elect.

[JohnH]

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?

I seem to remember comments from our ministry around recent ordinations that we should not think there is no one qualified in our church, and that numerous persons are.

I can think of two reasons:

1) One of the qualifications for leaders is the faithfulness of their children. Depending on how strictly this is interpreted, it may rule out many brothers who would otherwise be qualified.

In many plain churches, particularly less conservative ones, this seems to be honoured more in breach than observance. Think about how many ministers have at least one child who has left for a non plain church, yet nothing happens.

2) I believe a lot of churches add on extra-biblical qualifications for leadership in the church. In much of American Evangelicalism, a pastor without a seminary degree is seen as a suspicious decision by many. "Spiritual maturity" is sometimes held to a very high bar in Anabaptist circles. And every church has possibly had difficult experiences with leaders, and found the problem, and decided that avoid the problematic characteristics is another qualification for leaders they elect.

Anabaptists in turn seem to have a belief system that a leader must first be “approved” by another leader; a form of apostolic succession, which I don’t believe is biblical.

[JohnH]

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?
2. Is it problematic to apply Jesus' words "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" to church planting?
3. Can just anyone start a church; if not, why not?
4. What makes a church legitimate?
5. Can a church care about sound doctrine, and believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church still not have anyone who meets the scriptural qualifications for church leadership?

1. I guess a congregation could be full of people with major past moral failings, divorce situations, unruly children, who are winebibbers (or grape juice bibbers, if you are so inclined), and the like.

2. I don’t think it is. However, 2 or 3 don’t really need to conduct an ordination.

3. Yes, I think any sincere follower of Jesus can begin conduction worship services. Likewise, a follower of Jesus can begin assembling with 1 or 2 others and start to form a congrwhat ion.

4. Members who filled with the Holy Ghost, seeking to follow the scriptures, demonstrating love for one another, and sacrificing themselves in worship to the Lord.

5. Yes, I guess if they had a membership that has absurdly sinful pasts but is now penitent.

[ken_sylvania]

I've been part of and known churches who didn't really have men who met the scriptural qualifications for deacons and elders. But they believed in having ordinations. "Were big boys and big boys have ordinations." So they go ahead and have ordinations, but the churches struggle and struggle. This kinds of churches happen whenever people get the idea that "we are all priests unto God and we all have the Spirit" so anyone can start churches. You won't find this ideology in churches that are careful about sound doctrine, who vet people for influential positions, and who believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church.

With your experience in church planting, I'm quite interested in what you say here, and I have a lot of questions.

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?
2. Is it problematic to apply Jesus' words "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" to church planting?
3. Can just anyone start a church; if not, why not?
4. What makes a church legitimate?
5. Can a church care about sound doctrine, and believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church still not have anyone who meets the scriptural qualifications for church leadership?

I seem to remember comments from our ministry around recent ordinations that we should not think there is no one qualified in our church, and that numerous persons are. I'm not sure if that came from a fear that teaching the biblical qualifications would create an ideal so high in our minds that we didn't really think anybody fit the bill. But I thought it was interesting regardless.

1. The bar for "starting a church" seems to be pretty low now-a-days. All you need is one or two independently minded people to head it up (being set in one's ways and unwilling to work with others is a mark of NOT being qualified as a leader) and then a few more people who are discontent with where they are at and who find this new prospect intriguing (again, NOT marks of qualification) and you now have a "church" without anyone who meets the Biblical qualifications for leadership.
2. Yes, it's problematic because Jesus wasn't talking about church planting, so it involves taking His words out of context.
3. No, the New Testament model is for evangelism and new congregations to be related to existing congregations and existing leadership, not for people to go off and do their own thing.
4. Adherence to the teachings of the Bible and especially Jesus' teachings which involves faith, obedience, holy living, and mutual submission among many other things. If a "church" is started by a group of "independence minded" people it's probably not living out Jesus' teachings. From another angle, for a church to be legitimate it ought to be large enough to practice the NT teachings and examples about how a church should function - leadership, communion, feetwashing, etc.
5. Depends how you define those criteria. I've known people who "care about sound doctrine" in the sense that their own interpretation of Scripture is what constitutes "sound doctrine" and they hold that so highly they can't stand to be in any of the established groups and feel like they need to start their own. I think truly caring about sound doctrine also means being willing to blend with others and work together with people who have faults, in which case it's less common to end up on an island with a motley collection of malcontents. At the same time I would not want to say that everyone who is part of a small or disintegrating church group is at fault for the situation, not qualified as a leader, or not serious about sound doctrine.

[mike]

3. No, the New Testament model is for evangelism and new congregations to be related to existing congregations and existing leadership, not for people to go off and do their own thing.

What is the New Testament evidence that new congregations should be related to existing congregations and leadership organizationally (not just related by their common faith)?

How does this statement differ from the view of the Catholic church, which has the position, I think, that the Church traces its organizational roots back to Peter and the early church?

[Ernie]

I've been part of and known churches who didn't really have men who met the scriptural qualifications for deacons and elders. But they believed in having ordinations. "Were big boys and big boys have ordinations." So they go ahead and have ordinations, but the churches struggle and struggle. This kinds of churches happen whenever people get the idea that "we are all priests unto God and we all have the Spirit" so anyone can start churches. You won't find this ideology in churches that are careful about sound doctrine, who vet people for influential positions, and who believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church.

With your experience in church planting, I'm quite interested in what you say here, and I have a lot of questions.

I'll share my thoughts but they are just that. I don't proposed to be an authority on these matters.

I've interacted with about 25 new church planting teams the last ten years, and the results have been quite dismal for most.

1. How does it come about that a church literally has no one with the scriptural qualifications for leaders?

There are character qualifications. And there are age / children qualifications. Mormons ordain elders at age 18. This seems really problematic and unscriptural. Many Mennonites do the same thing. Why ordain a "younger" as an elder?
Elders are supposed to have their children on a good path and the children have a good reputation. You don't really know how this is going until the children are in their older teens, IMO.
Many church plants that are birds of a feather flocking together (independents) have mostly younger people. Many church plants are comprised of people who are running from something, and runners/reactionaries don't seem to meet the scriptural qualifications, IMO.
Also, I keep being astounded at the percentage of missionaries and church planters who are dealing with sexual addictions. It also seems that many independent minded church planters have a lot of relational and interpersonal baggage as well. They don't seem "full off wisdom".

2. Is it problematic to apply Jesus' words "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" to church planting?

Yes, I think the context for that is establishing a quorum of witnesses against a person involved in sin.

3. Can just anyone start a church; if not, why not?

I think the Lord can only bless a church in which his Spirit is leading the effort. I'm not sure a group of people can claim to be a legitimate church if they are running from whatever God is trying to do in their lives. I think such groups should disband. Go back to wherever they were when they started running away from God, and first learn the lessons he had for them there. At a minimum, they should come under an authority that those they ran away from can bless.
Others believe that any group of people who begin a church have actually formed a church in God's eyes. They think the new church may be a preemie, or a dwarf, or a sickly child, and struggle to survive, but it is still a church.
I agree that there are many preemies, simply because the church was birthed too quickly, but that alone doesn't make it illegitimate. I think it is illegitimate if the Spirit wasn't behind it.

4. What makes a church legitimate?

If its launch was done according to the direction of the Holy Spirit, I think it is legitimate.
If the new church is in competition with other faithful churches, if its founders are not under authority, if its founders are running from something else, if the founders are criticizing everyone else rather than working in harmony with other churches, if the founders are gaslighting their members, I highly doubt the church was formed under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

5. Can a church care about sound doctrine, and believe that authority is both earned and affirmed by the Lord and the church still not have anyone who meets the scriptural qualifications for church leadership?

See number 1

Many church planters are visionairies with zeal, but they may not be spiritually prepared to lead a congregation.

I seem to remember comments from our ministry around recent ordinations that we should not think there is no one qualified in our church, and that numerous persons are. I'm not sure if that came from a fear that teaching the biblical qualifications would create an ideal so high in our minds that we didn't really think anybody fit the bill. But I thought it was interesting regardless.

I interacted with an elder with this persuasion. He didn't think people should consider the qualifications for deacons and elders very much since he knew of people who supposedly had good qualifications but turned out to be really poor leaders. Rather he was inclined to ordain anyone he felt good about at the moment, and this could change rather quickly depending on how much a person agreed with him, and whether the person said good things about him. He would ordain almost anyone that he felt good about.
I find this quite problematic. First, I think the elder confused skills and giftings with qualifications. He knew of highly gifted men who didn't make good leaders. And I agree that many highly gifted men don't make good leaders. But I disagree that highly charactered and scripturally qualified men make poor leaders.
Secondly, because of his persuasion, he had no solid framework for appointing leaders, and he had difficulty accepting the congregation's thoughts about who was qualified.

I've used the following illustration with a church that was preparing for ordination.

Sometimes people refer to a child as an obedient child or as a disobedient child.
The obedient child is not perfectly obedient, yet we call them an obedient child because they always try to be obedient, and they are sorry when they are not obedient.
A disobedient child is not always disobedient, they may have some good traits, but they often disobey.
Yet, there is such a thing as an obedient child and a disobedient child.

Likewise, there is such a thing as a qualified brother and an unqualified brother when it comes to character. This doesn't mean that the qualified brother never falls short of the glory of God, or that the unqualified brother never does anything right. It just means that the qualified brother is blameless and the unqualified one is not yet blameless. All of us should be working towards becoming a blameless person.

In a multigenerational church that is faithfully trying to serve the Lord and in a church that is standing on the shoulders of faithful saints in the past, and in which there are quite a number of men between age 40 and 65, I think there should be a number of qualified persons. However, if the church is drifting, or the men have become spiritually complacent, or if it is simply a church of birds of a feather who have flocked together, there may not be any or many qualified brothers.

In a church plant setting...
I don't think a church should struggle without leadership if there is no one qualified to ordain. Bring in qualified leadership if necessary.
Or, as Allen Roth says, "If you can't ordain for life, then appoint someone for a couple years. If there is noone you can appoint for a couple years, then appoint for a year. If you don't have anyone you know well enough to appoint for a year, appoint for six months. Don't let a church flounder because of a lack of leadership!"

[mike]

I'll share my thoughts but they are just that. I don't proposed to be an authority on these matters.

I appreciate these words of wisdom.

[Neto]

Our congregation has started 4 others that I know of. (One of which started just before we became members.)

Our two adult sons are members of one that started without any of our ministers going along with the new group. They struggled for some years, but are now well established. We were involved with the next one, where one of our ministers went with the group. We went back to the 'mother church' after 6 months, mainly due to finding out that there was no intention of ever having adult Bible study classes on Sundays. Later, we were involved in an attempt to start another congregation, initially with the first push and blessing of our leadership. Then, when the head pastor found out that we were 'rolling back' the guidelines (to a more conservative standard from a few years prior), he withdrew his support, and so it fizzled.

[mike]

I think the Lord can only bless a church in which his Spirit is leading the effort...

I think it is illegitimate if the Spirit wasn't behind it.

I agree with this, but the question then is how to know for sure whether the Spirit is behind something.

With our highly structured organizations, procedures, and traditions, which often seem to roll along with or without the help of the Spirit, how do we know for sure that the Spirit is behind our established organizations?

What are the measuring points for whether a church is led by the Holy Spirit? Some of the things that have come up in this discussion so far seem to be:

Stability
Adherence to its historic values
Scripturally qualified leaders

I assume there are many more.