Lecture

This is lecture number 1 in the course Church Leadership and Administration, and we’re talking about the church as the context for leadership. A broad understanding of what the church is and how it operates is essential for us to grasp a biblical understanding of how one functions as a leader within the local representation of the body of Christ. We’ll use three passages as the outline identifies, beginning in the 28th chapter of Matthew at verse 16—the very, very familiar Great Commission passage. The Great Commission, of course, is recorded by other Bible writers, but it is this very succinct presentation by Matthew that occupies our attention.

In looking at the five ingredients of exhortation, if you will, Jesus gives these eleven men who will be the leaders of the early church. Some of you have your text of Scripture open and available at this point. I’m reading from the NIV rendition of the passage, verse 16,

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Now I have attempted to emphasize in this passage five ingredients or components, if you will, which I think the Lord is dealing with here. The first is the component of evangelizing. Now this really takes a wider understanding of the Great Commission. I certainly think evangelizing is present here in the Matthew passage, but it’s even more clear in the Mark 16 rendition, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” The point I am making is that you have a balance between evangelism, namely, the proclamation of the gospel, with the expectation that the Spirit of God will therefore bring people to Himself upon their hearing of the clear gospel; and the other side of the balance is what we might call edification, instruction, nurture, whatever word you wish to use.

I have used instructing at point D. in the outline here, but we don’t move immediately from evangelizing, namely, communicating the gospel, to instructing, namely, edifying, building people up in the things of the Word.

You have a couple of other steps that are implied here, and one is converting, that is, people responding to the gospel. The word evangelism (evangeliou) does not imply, and certainly does not include any reference to what kind of response we get. There’s an expected response, of course. There’s a prayed for response, but that is not built into the word, and so you have the idea of people converting, repenting (metanoóntas), turning around, going the other direction, changing their attitude toward God. Now pro-God and anti-sin, rather than pro-sin and anti-God is a crass way of putting it, but it emphasizes that turning around of metanoia and I think that’s what we’re getting at here, and their response to the gospel.

And then, congregating. Now I do not wish to develop any kind of a contentious issue in this business of baptism as it comes to us in verse 19, “Therefore, in your going, make disciples,” the only imperative of the passage, “of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” I merely want to say that as the New Testament passages add up, we begin to see that the act of baptism has some kind of a reference, some kind of a connection with the way people come into membership in the local, visible church. I dislike those terms visible and invisible, because a church is always visible in some ways. It’s visible in visible members, even though the body, the connection, the glue may be invisible.

But talking now about the universal church and the local church, we’re talking about the local church affiliation. Whether or not there are specific membership roles, what your particular denomination does with members is not the issue. There seems to be on the part of almost every Christian some understanding of a relationship between water baptism and membership in a local church or affiliation with a local church or fellowship with a local church, as there is between Spirit baptism and affiliation, membership, fellowship in the body of Christ, the universal church. That’s the point that I am making. Rather than say congregation, which implies a group of people who meet in a certain building, I would use the word congregating. Part of what the disciples were being sent to do in this context of New Testament leadership is to congregate people, bring them together, see that they affiliate with existing bodies of believers. In the case of Jerusalem, initiate a body of believers in the New Testament, the new covenant, the relationship of believers.

Then, of course, instructing takes us to verse 20, “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” This is teaching at the in-depth level because of Jesus’s words, “everything I have commanded you.” Even if we just took the imperatives, and that’s really a technical, literal, legalistic reading of the passage that Jesus only means to convey imperatives when He says, “everything I have commanded you,” but even if we just take that, there’s an enormous wealth of information. My goodness, we could nurture and preach and teach for five years just on the commands of Jesus. Add to that all of the other teaching that we have in the Gospels and then the entirety of special revelation, Old and New Testaments. You’re talking about a great significant role here in instructing in the body of Christ.

And then, of course, the idea of discipling. The focus of the passage, as I just hinted in passing a moment ago, is the imperative in verse 19, “in your going or having gone.” I realize that a case can be made, by the way, that go is in the imperative. I’ve read the article and have some understanding of the linguistic argument there. I’m not convinced, however, that New Testament scholars would wait in line to agree with that conclusion. There seems to be rather an agreement that the central imperative, quite possibly the only imperative of the passage is “make disciples.” “In your going, disciple all nations.” The heart and core of the Great Commission. The centrality of the church.

Let me say this as clearly as I know how to say it. What you understand about discipling—that is, how you interpret the meaning of what it is to disciple a person or a group of people—will largely determine your philosophy of ministry. The way you carry out your work in the church as a pastor or Sunday school superintendent or a minister of education, whatever your particular role happens to be—lay leadership or professional leadership—it doesn’t make any difference. It all comes right back to Matthew 28:19: what does it mean to fulfill the Great Commission by making disciples?

It’s very, very obvious throughout this course that I believe it means a great deal more than soul winning, a great deal more than just evangelizing, as important as evangelizing is. Evangelizing is the beginning: communicate the gospel. It is followed by converting: people responding and saying, “Yes, I want to follow Christ. Yes, I believe the gospel. Yes, I want to be a child of God.” That is followed by congregating: bringing those converted believers, those people who have experienced repentance and faith, into groups. The church at Thessalonica, the church at Antioch, the church at Jerusalem, the church at Ephesus, the church at Colossae, and so on.

Then instructing them in all things that the Lord Jesus has commanded, in all things that He taught, in all things that are available to us from the Scripture.

I’m sure it has occurred to you that our responsibility in the late twentieth century, with respect to instructing in the church, is far greater than that which Paul and Barnabas had at Antioch in Acts 11. There’s simply no question about the fact that we have more information. Paul was not able to instruct the believers in Antioch in the theology of the book of Romans. The book of Romans had not been written yet. Now conceivably the embryonic theology which later went into the book of Romans was available for the Antiochene believers, but that’s not the point obviously. Paul had no idea of John’s revelation written after his death. So we have this added revelation for which God holds us responsible. Think of the comparison between what we teach or what Moses taught or what Nehemiah taught in a leadership role, and you see how the Lord holds us responsible for the information and the light that we have.

And then, of course, is discipling, the heart and core of the whole matter. “Making disciples of all nations,” through these various processes, “and surely I will be with you always,” the promise “to the very end of the aiōnos.” Sometimes we make this geographical. Oh, you don’t because of your clear understanding of the text of the New Testament, but I can remember in earlier days as a child, maybe even as a young person, conceivably even as a college student, thinking that this was a highly geographical passage, that we are talking here about going anywhere in the world and the Lord will be with us. Well, that’s true, but that’s not what this passage says. “Surely I will be with you always to the end of time,” to the end of the aiōnos. The emphasis of the Great Commission is not geography. The emphasis of the Great Commission is discipling people. That is the exhortation of Matthew 28.

Now let’s go to the second major passage. I’ll find it in my Bible as you find it in yours from the second chapter of the book of Acts. Now what we have here, of course, is how these eleven men who listened so carefully in Matthew 28 acted on what they heard. What did it mean to them? How did they put it into practice when they had the opportunity, when they had the responsibility? Well, this is what they did in the passage beginning at verse 42. You have the thousands who believed, you have the evangelism (actually pre-evangelism), followed by evangelism, the conversion, the congregating now taking place, and verse 42 says,

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miracles were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. And every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

A marvelous passage. A crucial passage in our understanding of the church as a context for leadership.

Now again, look at the outline:

A: Balance Between Pre-Evangelism and Evangelism. You have a fascinating passage here in which the Pentecost sermon of Peter begins at verse 14. (Start up with 11.) “[He] raised his voice and addressed the crowd: ‘Fellow Jews and all you who are in Jerusalem,’” etc., etc. He does not get to evangelism, if we are very strict in our definition of evangelism as a proclamation of the gospel, until verse 38, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.” Now we’re talking evangelism. Everything up to this point has been pre-evangelism.

The point being: One of the things that we need to do more and better in the church today is instruct people as to what the gospel is before we ask them to act upon it in some way. That’s what Peter did. “Look, guys, let’s go all the way back to the beginning of the history of Israel and pick out some salient highlights and find out who in the world Jesus the Messiah is and why we’re standing here today in Jerusalem talking about Him, and how all of this business of speaking in different languages and what not that’s going on here really has a significant role in the history of our nation and of our people.” Having laid the ground work in pre-evangelism, he then comes in with the gospel and asks for a response.

So then you have B: The Balance Between Faith and Repentance. Here again, one could be contentious and raise arguments and drag out books and articles and somehow be combative in dealing with them. I do not wish to do so. It is not really to our purpose in learning leadership to deal with that, but it seems to me that one only gets rid of either of these ingredients to his own hurt and to the hurt of the understanding of the New Testament. Faith and repentance are taught in the passage: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.” Now I do not believe repentance is sorrowing for one’s sin, not crying at the altar, shrieking to God in fear, it is metonoia, turning around and going the other way, and one does that in faith.

But that does not mean that faith is simply the other side of the coin of repentance. I don’t know how far to push the illustration or how far to argue on the point. They are two distinct things. They are two different elements of the gospel. They are two different elements of response to the gospel, and the balance needs to be there. To totally downplay repentance, saying that all one needs to do is to have faith, is to ignore the message of the New Testament; and not just, by the way, in Acts 2, yet clear into Acts 17 in a totally pagan, alien setting for the gospel. No Jews around except Paul, and he says to pagan philosophers on Mars Hill, “You fellows need to repent.” So you have both of these ingredients, and the balance, of course, is the very significant dimension of importance here.

Then the balance between converting and congregating. You see how we’re lapsing back into the first section of the study here. In 1. B. and C., you have converting and congregating; and here now in 2. C: We want to see the balance between converting and congregating. Let me try to make it clear again if I can. Converting has to do, and I hesitate to speak of it that way because it almost sounds as though the evangelist or the Christian leader is going to do the conversion. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it’s biblical. We communicate the gospel. We speak the message. The Spirit of God does the converting.

Now, of course, there’s a human agency here. Of course there’s someone who explains what one does. What is faith? What is repentance? How do I do this? But the actual moving to do it is of the Spirit of God. This happens within the life of the person responding to the gospel. Congregating, then, has many more questions. What church? When? How? Why is it important? Well, here again, the whole process of education or instruction becomes a significant factor: the idea of bringing people into the body after they’ve responded in conversion.

I’m reminded, by way of example, of the great Indonesian revivals of a few years ago when, on the Island of Timor, there were what? 60,000 conversions reported. I don’t have the data here. I don’t recall all of the details and numbers, but 60,000 for some reason is a number that sticks in my mind—doesn’t make any difference. The point stands whether it was 10,000 or 60,000; and then some two years later, research was done on the churches on the island, the existing churches, and it was discovered that they had virtually not grown at all. Now how in the world do you have 10,000 conversions or 60,000 conversions, even 5,000 conversions, and have no visible numerical church growth? Well the only way is to somehow separate conversion from congregation or converting from congregating.

It’s essential that we bring together these elements so that we do not allow new converts to believe that they wander around in limbo, sort of as isolated lone rangers, doing the work of the Lord by themselves. It’s sort of like Apollos. Remember Apollos, who comes into the narrative of the book of Acts around the 18th chapter, and there he is sort of going hither and beyond telling people about the baptism of John. A great preacher, a tremendous apologist, he just didn’t have his act together because he didn’t have the proper information; and he wasn’t much of a team player at that point. Very out of step with what else was going on in the New Testament where no missionary journeys took place without this cooperative effort and the concept of teamwork and congregating being always before them.

We must move on to D: The Balance Between Internal Results and External Results. Here again, the passage is very, very crucial, and back in the book of Acts—I never really left it, just been talking round about it—verse 44: “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” That’s obviously congregating.

Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread together in their homes. They ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all of the people.

Now so far, absolutely nothing is being said about an overt, outside, external evangelism program. What? These guys didn’t believe in evangelism? Of course they did. They didn’t know how to do it? I mean they didn’t have Evangelism Explosion programs, they didn’t have the Four Spiritual Laws, what could they do? They didn’t have to have all of that, as helpful as it is. They could communicate the gospel very well, but they recognized the crucial factor that internal results must precede external results in the church. In other words, the church being the church is more important than the church saying to the world, “Why don’t you come in and hear the gospel?” Then external results do occur at the end of verse 47b, “And the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved.” Almost an afterthought in the passage, an addendum if you will. Oh yes, by the way, this group of people did not stay at its initial number. It grew. How? Well daily just more people seemed to come in as they saw what was going on inside.

You know, one of our biggest problems today in the late twentieth century is that when we go out and invite people to the church and invite people to Christ and then proceed with congregating them, we sometimes bring them to terrible disasters—spiritual and social and emotional disasters in our congregation.

And they wonder what on earth they have gotten into, rather than finding there this mutuality of possession and a glad and sincere attitude of heart one to another, praise for God, favor among the people. That’s what this church had in Jerusalem.

And then in E: A Balance Between Gospel Preaching and Social Service, the social service aspect comes in much more clearly in Acts 11 with the church at Antioch. As in the last paragraph of that chapter, you have the news of the famine in Jerusalem and their concern to take up an offering and do something for the brothers and the sisters to the south. But nevertheless, it is here as well, simply the fact that nobody starved at Jerusalem, as nobody starved in Antioch. The believers were together. They had everything in common. They gave to anyone as he had need. That’s very, very relevant for our day. Maybe for other countries than the United States or the North American continent, although certainly in many places now and in more places in the future, will it be necessary for Christians to be concerned about the social and physical needs of fellow Christians. It cannot be assumed that everybody drives to church in his own car and goes home to eat his own dinner. We need to make sure that brothers and sisters are not needy. Part of the gospel, part of the implications of being born again and of leading others within the framework of the church is this balance between gospel preaching (evangelism) and social service, taking care of the brothers and sisters, and then, in the wider dimension, taking care of those in the community to whom the Lord wants us to minister in that dimension.

Now let’s come to the final section in Ephesians 4. This is covered to some extent in the textbook, but it is such a crucial passage that we must spend a bit of time on it here. Beginning at verse 1, actually, although the early part of the chapter is highly theological and sets the groundwork, if you will, for the practical section we will deal with.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: [it being Psalm 68] “When he ascended on high, and led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.”

Now you have the focal point, obviously, on this gift business from Psalm 68:18: “What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe” [Ephesians 4:9–10]. Now up to this point we have a very highly theological treatment of the resurrection, the ascension. I’m not going to get into what we’re dealing with here in the earthly regions and the descension and so on. Suffice it to say that we are talking here about a unity in diversity kind of Christianity. Different people with different gifts coming together to form one body, and the emphasis on unity is so very, very clear. The unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. “One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” couldn’t be more dominant in the passage.

Now you come down to another dimension in gifted leadership (verse 11): “It was he, the risen Lord, who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.” Take that to be teaching pastors if you wish. There is sufficient argument to take them as two separate words. There is also good argument to suggest that they may be together in the grammar of the passage. You could argue it either way and be on solid theological and grammatical grounds. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on gifted leadership. People who serve the church because they have spiritual gifts given them by the Holy Spirit are now given to the church by the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ.

What is their duty? To involve the laity (verse 12), “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity [there’s that concept again] in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the full measure of perfection found in Christ.” That’s point D. in the outline, obviously dealing with verses 12 and 13. Now the unity theme comes in again from A. I didn’t mention it again in the outline. Spiritual maturity will always bring about unity among the people of God. But that’s our goal. Why do we lead? Why do we teach? Why do we seek to carry out programs of instruction within the framework of the congregation? How do we produce leaders? The concept of maturity, spiritual maturity, is central to the entire task, to everything that we’re trying to do within the body of Christ.

“Then” as the maturity theme goes on in verse 14, “we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” No more of that. “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head; that is, Christ.

For from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” We call that mutual edification. Are we edified by individuals, the pastor, the Sunday school teacher, the deacon, the elder? Of course, but we are also engaged in a constant, ongoing process of simultaneous mutual edification through sharing, through fellowship, through praying for one another, through studying the Bible together, through multitudinous activities which make up the work of the church.

The exhortation comes in Matthew. The example comes in Acts. The explanation in Ephesians, and there we have the church as the context for leadership.